European industrial firms are facing an extended energy crisis that challenges their global competitiveness. Energy costs across the continent have more than doubled since 2020, with the rapid expansion of renewable energy sources introducing unpredictable price volatility. At the same time, regulatory pressure is intensifying, with carbon taxes and decarbonization mandates creating additional urgency for companies to actively manage their energy consumption. For many low-margin industries, energy has become a decisive strategic cost center that can make or break profitability.

Yet within this challenge lies enormous potential opportunity. At General Catalyst, we look for inflection points like this that can drive resilience, sustainability, and industrial transformation across Europe. Companies that can dynamically optimize their energy usage can achieve significant cost reductions while advancing sustainability and decarbonization goals, turning a challenge into a competitive advantage as energy volatility increases.

That’s why we’re leading the seed round for encentive, whose energy optimization platform integrates directly with on-site industrial and renewable assets to cut energy costs and improve margins.

Turning Energy Volatility into Competitive Advantage

Rather than simply monitoring energy usage, encentive actively orchestrates assets like cooling and heating systems, batteries and solar installations, and EV charging infrastructure based on real-time energy consumption, production volumes, and market dynamics. Their AI-driven software solution, flexOn, generates intelligent schedules and automatically controls industrial energy assets to leverage latent flexibility, cutting electricity costs by up to 30% and significantly reducing carbon emissions. Primarily used by industrial companies with annual consumption of at least two gigawatt hours, flexOn allows companies to intelligently draw on on-site renewable energy and automatically tap into grid resources precisely when they are most abundant and lowest cost.

The team powering encentive combines commercial execution with technical depth in a traditionally complex and slow-moving industry. CEO Nicolás Juhl is an experienced sales leader who has already scaled multiple companies. Alongside him are co-founders Torge Lahrsen, Daniel Ehnes, and Sascha Greve, who contribute deep expertise in energy systems and software development. Together, we believe they are building an enduring company that will transform energy consumption from a static, volatile cost to a flexible resource.

Our Conversation with Nicolás, Torge, Daniel, and Sascha

We recently sat down with the encentive team to learn more about their journey and vision for Europe’s resilient energy-secure future. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you see about the future that others are missing?

The energy sector has undergone dramatic change over the past five years. Because we are working deep inside the machine rooms of our customers, we believe flexibility will be at the core of industrial energy and asset management. It is not only a lever to reduce energy costs, but also the foundation for integrating AI directly into physical assets. This role is still widely underestimated, but it will unlock an enormous pool of additional efficiency.

What’s the most counterintuitive thing you’ve learned?

Sometimes, using more energy can actually save companies six- to seven-figure sums. Energy efficiency in the future will not only be determined by consuming less, but by consuming at the right time: when renewable energy is abundant and cheap. In fact, higher consumption at the right moment can translate into significantly lower costs.

From a technical standpoint, what’s novel or fresh about how you’re building?

Our approach is to bring AI directly onto industrial assets and optimize their behaviour. By connecting advanced algorithms with heavy machinery, we enable the shifting of electrical consumption over time without interfering with our customers’ production processes. This is possible because our smart energy management platform, flexOn, combines state-of-the-art algorithms with highly accurate digital models of physical assets. That allows us to predict and optimize their behavior with precision and full automation.

What is your approach to building team culture early on?

Our approach to building team culture is rooted in our mission: driving a sustainable future. We believe culture comes from how you work every day. For us, that means combining ambition with responsibility. Everyone from intern to founder has 100% ownership of their projects from day one.

One of our guiding principles is ‘Do the hard things first.’ We deliberately chose not to stay with simple data visualizations but went straight into the machine rooms of industry, knowing it would be far more complex and take longer. But only there could we build a solution that truly controls assets instead of just showing data. 

A second principle is ‘Don’t be afraid of the dark.’ We believe that the biggest potential lies in areas that seem messy, technically demanding, or hard to access. For us, that dark space was the industrial machine room, where real value-creation happens.

These principles shape how we work together: we support each other, celebrate persistence, and embrace the pioneering spirit it takes to develop a solution that really makes a big impact. In short, we build a culture where responsibility and teamwork go hand in hand, and where our collective drive makes the difference.

What impact do you want this company to have on the world?

Our goal is to help build a resilient and hyper-efficient energy system in Europe. We want to empower European industrial companies to stay competitive and continue to grow while decarbonizing along the way. Economic strength and sustainability should go hand in hand on the path to a sustainable future.