Octopus Energy Group has announced it will acquire a majority stake in Uplight, a leading provider of customer engagement and flexibility management solutions, in a deal made in partnership with Schneider Electric, which will remain as a significant minority partner.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close later this year.
Uplight currently serves more than 85 utilities across North America, including eight of the ten largest in the U.S., and manages over 8.5 GW of flexible load through demand response, distributed energy resource management, and customer engagement solutions. The platform will continue to operate independently following the acquisition.
The investment is designed to give utilities the tools to modernize grid operations and strengthen resilience as surging electricity demand from AI-driven data centers and electrification puts increasing pressure on the grid.
By connecting customer participation more directly to grid operations, utilities can unlock flexible capacity faster and more affordably than traditional infrastructure buildouts.
“As energy demand surges in the U.S., utilities need the tools to deliver reliable and affordable power for their customers,” said Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US, in a statement. “This partnership brings together Octopus’s world-leading expertise in flexibility, Schneider Electric’s grid intelligence and Uplight’s deep relationships with leading U.S. utilities to turn customer participation into dependable grid capacity. Together, we can help accelerate the shift to a smarter, more resilient and more affordable energy system.”
Kraken, the operating system for utilities originally developed by Octopus Energy Group and now operating as an independent global technology business, will also begin exploring collaboration with Uplight to combine the companies’ customer operations capabilities and flexibility orchestration expertise.
Octopus Energy Group operates the world’s largest virtual power plant, with more than 350,000 electric vehicles enrolled worldwide and millions of customers participating in demand-side flexibility programs across 27 countries.
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