African Electric Vehicle platform Spiro secures USD55 million from Chinese investor NewTrails Capital
Spiro is Africa’s largest electric mobility company and operates the continent’s most extensive battery-swapping network for electric two-wheel vehicles. With more than 100,000 electric motorcycles on the road, over 2,500 swapping stations and more than 30 million battery swaps to date
Black News 
Spiro, Africa’s leading electric vehicle (and clean energy infrastructure platform, today announced the successful closing of its latest funding round at US$270 million.
The funding is to boost electric mobility and energy infrastructure in Africa.
This milestone follows a newly finalized US$55 million investment from NewTrails Capital, a prominent Chinese growth-stage investment fund focusing on emerging markets with strategic locations in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Nigeria.
Scaling Africa’s next-generation mobility and energy ecosystem
This capital injection positions Spiro among the continent’s most heavily backed Africa’s e-mobility and energy ecosystem.
Building on the support of long-standing institutional partners such as Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), Spiro’s latest equity round also draws global capital from Europe and Africa, Impact Fund Denmark, Equitane and FEDA, on top of the recent backing from Nithio and the Africa Go Green Fund.
“I would like to thank NewTrails Capital for believing in Spiro’s model and supporting our unique tech, energy and innovation journey. Having deployed 100,000 electric vehicles and 2,500 smart-swap stations across seven active markets, Spiro has firmly moved past the proof-of-concept phase. Partnering with NewTrail Capital’s deeply experienced team marks a powerful new chapter for Spiro as we prepare for the next steps of our pan-African and international expansion”,
Gagan Gupta – Founder of Spiro and Chairman of Equitane.
“We believe Spiro is driving a profound “energy revolution” across mobility use cases in Africa. This represents not only a vast and highly imaginative market opportunity, but also the potential to grow into an infrastructure-like business that creates meaningful commercial, social, and environmental value.
Yufan Zhang – the Founding Partner of NewTrails Capital
In our view, Spiro’s core strengths lie in its deeply localized operating capabilities, vertically integrated supply chain, digitally enabled ecosystem, sound unit economics, and strong ability to scale rapidly. More importantly, Spiro has systematically integrated vehicles, batteries, energy replenishment, payments, and service networks into a solution that is truly tailored to the needs of African users, effectively addressing long-standing structural pain points in the local market.
As a Chinese fund committed to investing in Africa’s energy transition and green technology, we are also very encouraged to see Chinese supply chains and financing playing an increasingly important role in this process. Spiro is still a young company, and everything today is only the beginning. We look forward to continuing to fulfill our role as a long-term investor, contributing our resources and experience, growing together with Spiro, and helping accelerate Africa’s new energy transition.”
It is being expected that the partnership will be instrumental to support Spiro’s current manufacturing and supply chain localization effort on the continent in particular with Chinese suppliers.
Spiro is Africa’s largest electric mobility company and operates the continent’s most extensive battery-swapping network for electric two-wheel vehicles.
With more than 100,000 electric motorcycles on the road, over 2,500 swapping stations and more than 30 million battery swaps to date, Spiro is replacing expensive fossil-fuel transport with affordable, accessible and sustainable mobility solutions.
NewTrails Capital on the other hand, is a growth-stage investment fund dedicated to emerging markets across Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, which aligns with global growth corridors like the Belt and Road initiative.
