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Er zijn nog drie gegadigden voor CLS, de Franse specialist in aardobservatie uit de portefeuille van NPM, de holding van de Waalse zakenfamilie Frère. Eentje daarvan is Belgisch: SPDG, het investeringsvehikel van de familie Périer-D’Ieteren.

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today led a multistate lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s (Department) discontinuation of awarded grants under the State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG) program. These competitive grants provide critical funding for the professional development of special education staff and support services for children with disabilities. In California, more than 880,000 students are eligible for special education services.

Ohio's State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG) is focused on enhancing the educational experience by empowering schools to implement an Integrated Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). This…

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Europe's electrification is hitting its grid before it hits demand. Connection queues are at record levels, prices swing with congestion, and businesses wait years to add load. Octave.energy, a six-year-old company in Mechelen, Belgium, raised €10 million this week to sell the workaround: batteries that store power on site, plus software that decides when to charge, discharge, and trade. The round is a Series A led by SPDG Growth, the family office of the Périer-D'Ieteren family, with participation from imec.istart, BNP Paribas Fortis and KBC. It pairs equity with flexible debt, and that structure says more about Octave than the size of the check. Octave sells battery energy storage systems (BESS) with its own energy management system (EMS). A business installs a cabinet or a 20-foot container of lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cells on site. The software shifts when the battery draws power, shaves the customer's peak consumption, coordinates EV charging, and, where markets allow, sells flexibility back to the grid. Customers can switch between 15+ external optimizers — the platform does not lock them in. Two details make this round unusual for European cleantech. First, it has been profitable for three consecutive years and booked €16 million of revenue in 2025. It has deployed more than 200 MWh across over 400 businesses, from Colruyt Group and McDonald's to Eneco, Naturgy and Nextensa. Most battery hardware companies burn capital for a decade on the argument that scale arrives later. Octave reached recurring profit on a regional footprint first. Second, the money is shaped like an asset business, not a software one: a battery is a depreciating asset with a contracted revenue stream, and once returns are predictable enough for banks to lend against them, equity is the expensive option. The market context explains the timing. As we wrote in September, grid batteries set a deployment record in 2025 and then cut their own revenue, as merchant storage crowded the same peak hours. That is a front-of-meter story: utility-scale batteries competing against each other in wholesale markets. It sits behind the meter, at the business's own connection point, where the battery's only rival is the customer's own peak-hour price. The tailwind is structural. Per the IEA's Electricity 2026 analysis, grid connection queues have reached record levels worldwide. Regulators are reaching for non-firm connections, shared connection points, and demand-side participation to connect things faster. Behind-the-meter storage and software deploy in months; a new line takes years. Octave's first projects outside Belgium are already operational in Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain. The new capital funds local sales and operations teams in the Netherlands, France and Germany, and continues work on the EMS and asset-management platforms. **The investment takeaway:** grid congestion is becoming a software market, and the winners are financed like asset owners rather than like SaaS companies. The open question for Octave is whether the platform layer — Octave Portal and the Battery Cloud monitoring service — eventually becomes the recurring-revenue product customers pay for, or stays the reason the hardware is financeable. Watch whether expansion into three new markets holds the unit economics that let a hardware company be profitable before its growth round. Octave.energy raises €10 million to accelerate European expansion The company's own announcement: the round combines equity and flexible debt, led by SPDG Growth, to fund BESS and EMS expansion into the Netherlands, France and Germany. Octave.energy Primary source for round terms, deployment figures and expansion plan. Octave lands record €10M seed to expand energy storage across Europe Dealroom's take on the round: at €10 million, it is the largest early-stage energy deal on record for a Belgian startup, in a sample of 68 comparable deals. Dealroom News Market-context source sizing the round against comparable Belgian energy deals. Profitable Belgian CleanTech Octave.energy raises €10 million to scale BESS and EMS solutions across Europe EU-Startups coverage detailing profitability, customer base, investor roster and the grid-constraint market thesis behind the round. EU-Startups Independent press confirmation of the company's figures and investors.

Firma Octave.energy z Mechelen, specjalizująca się w magazynowaniu energii i inteligentnym zarządzaniu aktywami energetycznymi, pozyskała 10 milionów euro od prywatnych inwestorów oraz banków KBC i BNPP Fortis. Środki mają posłużyć do wejścia na rynki Holandii, Francji i Niemiec, a także do uruchomienia nowej usługi gwarantowanego dostępu do mocy elektrycznej. Kto stoi za finansowaniem Operację przeprowadziły SPDG, wehikuł inwestycyjny rodziny Périer-D'Ieteren, oraz Imec za pośrednictwem swojego akceleratora imec.istart. Obaj inwestorzy byli już wcześniej obecni w akcjonariacie Octave i teraz ponownie potwierdzili swoje zaufanie do spółki, wykładając łącznie ponad 5 milionów euro nowego kapitału.

Ohio's State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG) is focused on enhancing the educational experience by empowering schools to implement an Integrated Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). This…

Staff and Larkin reviewed grant history (including Elevate Vernon) and proposed a revolving loan fund to offer smaller, faster payback loans (up to about $10,000) for working capital and technical assistance; committee asked for a formal September proposal and potential SPDG funding sources.