Octopus Energy has acquired BD Energy, a Danish startup whose algorithms buy and sell electricity almost entirely without human traders, as the British group looks to deepen the technology behind its power trading operation.
The deal, announced on Tuesday, brings the Aarhus-based company into Octopus Energy Trading, the division of Octopus Energy Group that buys and sells electricity and helps manage the changing supply of renewable power. The transaction takes effect immediately, with BD Energy’s founding team, leadership and staff continuing to operate from Denmark.
Founded in 2022, BD Energy concentrates exclusively on short-term power markets, the window running from 24 hours ahead of delivery down to the moment electricity flows into the grid. Its platform crunches large volumes of data, from electricity prices and supply and demand to weather forecasts, and uses machine learning to spot opportunities and make trades automatically. Around 99 per cent of its trades are algorithmic.
That approach has carried the 31-person company a long way in four years. Since launching in Denmark it has grown rapidly and now operates across 25 electricity pricing zones in 15 countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and the United States.
Under its new owner, BD Energy will draw on Octopus’s capital and technology to increase the amount of electricity it trades and expand into new markets around the world.
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