Accelerating our global mission to make the green revolution faster and cheaper with $250m investment and launch in Japan

Octopus Energy is on a mission to transform energy globally, faster and cheaper than anyone imagined.

We are relentless in driving the smart grid technologies that’ll deliver cheaper green electricity to fuel our homes, businesses, cars and heating.

In doing so, we are just about the fastest growing private company in the UK. We launched 4.5 years ago as an energy retailer in the UK, offering cheaper greener energy with outstanding service, powered by our technology platform, Kraken.

We are as focused today on delivering outstanding service as we were the day we signed customer number one - people have to use energy and it's not cool to make that painful. And just as importantly, the green revolution will be more successful if customers are part of it, not subjected to it.

This mission has excited people – today we have 1.8m customers in the UK, we serve tens of thousands more across Australia, the USA and Germany. We’ve acquired businesses which are leading the way in smart grid tech and are licensing our technology to companies like E.ON/npower, Good Energy and Nectr. We’ve launched Electric Juice – the UK’s first roaming network for electric vehicle charging, our innovative energy tariffs bring you cheaper greener power when the wind is blowing and sun is shining, and you can even lease electric cars from us.

This transformative, whole-system approach to the green revolution has caught the eye of companies around the world. Earlier this year, we were proud to become a Unicorn (valued at more than $1bn) when Australia’s largest energy company, Origin, invested to fuel our growth globally and to adopt our smart technology to bring their own customers cheaper greener power.

And now we're thrilled that Tokyo Gas, one of Japan’s most respected utilities, with 135 years of heritage, is partnering with Octopus to launch Octopus Energy in Japan, and on top of that will invest $200m for a 9.7% stake in Octopus Energy Group to help drive our global renewables mission faster.

In addition, existing investor, Origin Energy, will invest an additional $47m, taking the total new investment to almost quarter of a billion dollars, and values Octopus Energy at over $2bn (🦄🦄)

This is not an achievement in itself. It is merely the fuel that will allow us to keep accelerating in our determination to drive a cheaper green revolution globally. We’ve now demonstrated many of the capabilities and opportunities of a smart grid. We’ve shown at scale that tech can reduce costs whilst going green, and that customers can be the centre of the solution rather than an afterthought.

Octopus Energy Japan will be run by a 70:30 Joint Venture, named TG Octopus Energy. It'll use the same Kraken platform as the UK, Australia, Germany, USA and New Zealand and will deliver renewable and smart tariffs, and pave the way for much more innovation and other products and services. There's a long way to go on renewables in Japan, with only 18.9% of electricity from renewable sources last year, but huge appetite to increase this and Octopus Energy and Tokyo Gas intend to be significant contributors to that improvement.

Increasingly, our vision is attracting some of the most impressive businesses and investors in energy from around the world. We’re now getting the financial backing to really speed up the fight against climate change, to take it global fast, and to challenge those companies who’re trying to hold back change.

Thank you to every member of our team who’re dedicating their careers to this, to every customer who’s chosen us and helped make this possible, to governments and civil servants who’ve embraced this new approach. We will work relentlessly to deliver.

The future’s bright. The future’s green.