ARC Ride raises $33.3m for African battery-swapping network

Two- and three-wheelers account for roughly 70 percent of Kenya's vehicle registrations, and across the continent more than seven million are on the road, nearly a quarter of all motor vehicles in Africa; in Kenya, motorcycles burn nearly as much fuel as all cars combined. Electrifying that fleet is a core transition-finance assignment.

ARC Ride, the Kenyan company building that battery-swapping layer, has raised $33.3m to expand across other African markets, with Novastar Ventures and Stockholm-based Norrsken22 leading the round and IFC, British International Investment and Proparco joining as co-investors. Existing backers Musashi Seimitsu, the Japanese Tier-1 automotive supplier, and Talanton, the African impact investor, added further capital, and the financing includes a debt facility from BII's Kinetic programme and Mirova, the manager of Swedish wind farms this publication covered last month.

ARC Ride's model is the network, not the unit sale: the company runs a growing continental network of smart battery-swapping stations that let riders exchange depleted batteries for fully charged ones in minutes. Founder Jo Hurst Croft frames the funding as a chance to scale that infrastructure “at pace,” with an ambition to make electric mobility the default choice for riders across Africa by making it more accessible, more affordable and more practical than petrol alternatives.

Development-finance institutions, a Japanese automotive supplier and commercial venture funds rarely share one cap table unless the underlying asset is expected to behave like infrastructure. The debt facility alongside equity means the backers expect the station network to throw off revenue streams that can service borrowing. At $33.3m this is a modest round, but if ARC Ride can prove the model across borders, it will look like the template for the next wave of African transport electrification.