Spiro, the electric mobility company building battery-swapping infrastructure for motorcycles across Africa, has raised $215m in equity funding as it pushes deeper into a capital-intensive race to electrify urban transport.
The round, backed by investors including Impact Fund Denmark and Equitane, lands four months after Spiro secured a $50m debt facility and less than a year after a separate $100m equity raise led by Afreximbank’s Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA). It brings the company’s disclosed funding to more than $415m since 2023, making it one of the most heavily capitalised electric two-wheeler operators on the continent.
The speed and size of the fundraising underscore a conviction among development finance institutions and climate-focused funds that Africa’s electric mobility transition will not be won by selling vehicles alone. Instead, investors are betting on companies that control both the hardware and the refuelling infrastructure — a capital-hungry model that requires dense station networks, large battery inventories and local assembly capacity.
Spiro’s founder Gagan Gupta described the past year as “a defining strategic milestone,” pointing to vehicle deployments and the build-out of swap-station networks across seven markets.
A rapid build-out
Founded in 2022, Spiro has scaled at a pace unusual for hardware-heavy mobility startups. It now operates in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon. In a statement, the company said it has deployed more than 100,000 electric motorcycles and built over 2,500 battery-swapping stations. Riders have completed more than 30 million swaps, covering a reported one billion carbon-free kilometres.
The footprint marks a steep increase from a year ago, when Spiro reported 80,000 bikes and 1,500 swap stations across six countries. The expansion has been fuelled by a series of capital injections: a $63m debt package from GuarantCo and Société Générale in 2023, a $50m Afreximbank loan in 2024, the $100m FEDA-led equity round in 2025, and the $50m debt facility from Afreximbank, Nithio and the Africa Go Green Fund four months ago.
The fresh equity will fund further network expansion, manufacturing operations and energy infrastructure, including solar-powered swap stations and battery storage systems. The company also plans to enter Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Chasing the boda boda rider
Unlike Western EV markets built around passenger cars, Africa’s electric transition is concentrated in commercial two-wheelers. An estimated 25 million motorbikes operate across the continent, many as motorcycle taxis — boda bodas or okadas — whose riders cover 150–200km a day. Fuel typically eats up most of their daily earnings.
Spiro’s model targets those unit economics directly. Its electric bikes retail for roughly $800, about 40% less than a comparable petrol model, the company says. Through battery swapping, riders can cut per-kilometre operating costs by around 30%, saving up to $3 per day on fuel and maintenance. Swapping eliminates charging downtime, a requirement for drivers who depend on keeping the wheels moving.
For Spiro, this creates two revenue streams: upfront hardware sales and recurring pay-as-you-go fees from battery swaps. That combination, the company argues, builds a sticky business with high operating leverage as utilisation rises.
Local assembly and vertical integration
Spiro is not simply importing finished vehicles. It assembles bikes at facilities in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria, and claims a 30% local component sourcing rate, with a target of 70% within two years. The company manufactures its own proprietary battery management systems in Kenya and integrates renewable energy storage into its swapping stations to insulate against unreliable local grids. It also operates a battery recycling facility in Nigeria.
This degree of vertical integration helps defend margins and aligns with the industrialisation mandates of DFI backers. Afreximbank and other institutions have made clear they favour companies that create local manufacturing jobs and reduce reliance on imported petroleum and finished vehicles.
A crowded but growing market
Spiro’s capital raise comes as funding flows into Africa’s electric transport sector more broadly. Competitors including Ampersand, Roam and BasiGo have all raised significant rounds. Startups such as Arc Ride and Gogo Electric continue to attract early-stage capital. Spiro itself recently announced a partnership with vehicle-financing platform Max to accelerate adoption.
The company’s leadership insists that the real competitor is not other EV startups but the entrenched gasoline motorcycle market. Two-wheeler penetration in Africa still lags far behind markets like India, leaving a large, untapped addressable market.
Still, questions remain over how quickly any of these capital-intensive operators can reach profitability. Building thousands of swap stations, stocking batteries, and financing bike sales across multiple jurisdictions with diverse regulatory and currency risks is an expensive undertaking. Spiro’s rapid fundraising has given it a large war chest, but the path to unit-level profitability across seven — and soon more — markets will require sustained execution and continued investor patience.