The Venture Codex

Participated · Debt Financing · Jun 2026

Spearmint Energy develops and operates large-scale battery storage projects aimed at delivering stable, resilient and affordable power to the grid. The company’s operating portfolio includes projects such as Tierra Seca, Seven Flags and Revolution, and it maintains a broader development pipeline across the United States. Spearmint recently strengthened its balance sheet via a $325 million expanded debt facility to advance operating assets and fund strategic growth initiatives. Leadership highlights include founder, president and CEO Andrew Waranch, who framed the financing as growth capital to accelerate deployment and optimization of battery storage. Lenders participating in the facility cited the growing importance of battery storage within the nation’s energy infrastructure and their support for Spearmint’s asset quality and growth strategy.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2021

Xeal offers smart EV charging hardware and software that lets multifamily and commercial real estate owners install chargers with little to no infrastructure upgrades and manage them remotely via a dashboard showing charging sessions, energy management, utilization and revenue share. Its driver app uses token-based technology to enable reliable access to chargers without depending on cellular or garage IT infrastructure. Xeal’s patent-pending Apollo protocol is a distributed, ledger-based communication system that the company says enables 100% self-reliance for smart functions, 100% uptime and 50x faster processing speed. The company reports relationships with more than 80 major real estate companies, including Lincoln Property Company, NRP Group, Stoneweg and Harrison Street. Xeal is described as a hyper-growth, venture-backed tech startup headquartered in New York City. Recent financing activity is intended to strengthen its funding position and support expansion of relationships in the commercial real estate industry to deliver EV power nationwide. Xeal develops Apollo, a patent-pending protocol that enables offline, closed-loop payments and authentication for public EV chargers using time-bound cryptographic tokens and distributed ledgers. Drivers download an app (over Wi‑Fi), receive a token tied to their payment and vehicle details, and authenticate charging sessions locally without modems, SIM cards, or ethernet. Tokens dissolve after use and chargers exchange distributed-ledger records of sessions and fees to nearby devices so data reconciles when phones reconnect. Xeal says the approach is more secure than internet-dependent chargers and reduces costs for real estate owners by removing the need for data plans or internet installs. The company launched Apollo in July after roughly two years of development and is on track to install 2,000 stations by year-end and 10,000 in 2022. Xeal plans to use the new funding to reach the 10,000-station target, hire more engineers, and potentially expand the offline protocol to other use cases. Xeal builds a predictive AI platform that integrates with electric vehicles, smart buildings, utilities and charger hardware to turn charging stations into revenue-generating amenities for property owners. The company says its technology eliminates energy price volatility and can generate up to 700% return on investment for buildings. Xeal provides calculators for apartments, condos and workplaces — for example, it recommends five chargers for a 30-spot apartment building, estimating $17,550 in annual charging revenue and a 20-ton annual CO2 reduction at a $2.25/hour rate for 30 hours per week. Its software is already operational at properties across nearly a dozen cities and the company works with leading charger manufacturers in the U.S. Xeal was launched in 2019 and has had support from the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). With new seed funding, the company plans to expand its geographic footprint in the U.S. and develop and deploy next-generation technology in 2021.