Morgan Stanley’s headquarters at 1585 Broadway, New York. Credit: Morgan Stanley “We’ve built a leading energy automation platform in Australia, and this investment gives us the backing to build on that leadership globally,” said Chris Thompson, co-founder of Amber Electric. The Melbourne company has raised €49m in a Series E round, Morgan Stanley Investment Management said on Monday. 1GT led the round. It is the private climate equity strategy that Morgan Stanley Investment Management runs.
E.ON also took part. The German utility ranks among the UK’s largest energy suppliers. It agreed a partnership with Amber shortly before the round closed. The money will fund Amber’s growth and its expansion in Europe, Morgan Stanley Investment Management said.
What the company does Thompson and Dan Adams founded Amber in Melbourne in 2017. It operates as an energy retailer and sells directly to Australian households. The company says it holds more than 50% of the Australian market for automated batteries, which it says makes it the country’s largest battery automation provider. Its distributed energy resources platform gives households access to wholesale electricity pricing.
It does that by optimising their storage and generation assets in real time. Those assets cover rooftop solar, home batteries and electric vehicles. The software behind it is called SmartShift. Morgan Stanley Investment Management describes it as AI-driven.
It combines forecasts of wholesale energy prices with household solar production and consumption, in real time, to increase what customers earn. Amber says customers can sell excess renewable energy back to the grid at the same price large generators receive. Its stated mission is to shift the world to 100% renewables. What the investor said Vikram Raju runs climate private equity investing at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and at 1GT.
Amber will play a consequential role in the energy transition in Australia, Europe and beyond, he said. “As power systems become increasingly decentralized, energy flexibility and household-level engagement are essential to integrating renewable energy at scale,” Raju said. 1GT invests in what Morgan Stanley calls growth companies delivering climate solutions. It works across four themes: power, mobility, food and agriculture, and circularity. Its parent reported more than 1,300 investment professionals and $2 trillion under management or supervision as of 30 June 2026. Where this sits in the energy-and-AI story TNW has covered this thread from the supply side.
Emerald AI raised $150m in August for data-centre grid flexibility. In September, Google and Nvidia joined an alliance on flexible data centres. Verse raised $54m in June on data-centre power. Amber sits on the household side of the same question.
So does Base Power, which raised $1bn at a $13bn valuation in August for home batteries and grid services in the United States. The Australian context is its own thread. The market operator AEMO published a forecast in August for data-centre electricity demand to 2036. Amber sells into that same market.
What the announcement does not say Morgan Stanley Investment Management did not disclose a valuation for Amber. It did not name the other investors in the round. The release gives no customer numbers, no revenue figure and no total raised to date. It does not say which European markets Amber will enter first, or on what timetable.
The E.ON partnership is described only as recent, without a date or commercial terms. On Amber’s existing work outside Australia, the release says only that it works in partnership with utilities internationally. It names no partner other than E.ON.
