Meet CorPower Ocean – a Swedish scale-up developing wave energy converters. This EIC Scaling Club’s Renewable Energies group member has been on a mission to harness the power of the ocean to provide clean and renewable energy since 2012. Today, after over a decade of diligent solution development and overcoming numerous challenges, CorPower Ocean is wowing the world with its innovations. 

We sat down with the scale-up’s Senior Technical Project Manager, Eunice Silva, to learn about the company’s mesmerizing solution, the team behind it, and more. 

Tapping into the ocean’s power

CorePower Ocean is an industry leader in wave energy on a mission to power the planet with clean electricity from ocean waves. Wave energy represents one of the largest untapped sources of clean energy, and it can help stabilise the clean energy mix with other renewable energies, leaving the fossil fuels behind. 

With CorPower Ocean, 24/7 carbon-free electricity at a lower cost is not a dream but a reality. 

The scale-up has developed wave energy converters – point absorber type, with a heaving buoy on the surface absorbing energy from ocean waves. The technology is inspired by the pumping principle of a human heart, using a pre-tension system to pull the buoy down, then waves push it up, and the stored energy pulls it back down. This creates a consistent power flow, making the system lightweight and efficient.

In 2023, the company successfully installed its first commercial-scale wave energy converter in Northern Portugal. Eunice tells us that CorPower Ocean has now recovered the device from the sea for maintenance and upgrades before redeployment and adds that the initial deployment demonstrated the device's survivability in harsh ocean conditions and its ability to generate electricity in regular sea states: “These have been the two key challenges that historically have held back the adoption of wave energy – the capacity to produce electricity in regular sea conditions while being protected during storm conditions. We overcame these challenges with our system in Portugal.”  

Now that the technology has been deployed, CorPower Ocean is working on receiving prototype certification for the installed solution. Eunice adds that the company is working on a new generation of devices that will be type-certified to enable larger-scale, bankable, and commercially viable projects in the future.

From lab to sea

CorPower Ocean’s story dates back to 2009 when the first idea of the technology was born in the head of a medical doctor Stig Lundbäck. After some years of development, in 2012, the company was founded by Lundbäck and tech entrepreneur Patrik Möller, now CEO. 

Besides the vast and complex research and development process that has led to the scale-up solution, the secret of CorePower Ocean’s success lies in the team behind it. Today, it’s a team of 85 minds from 20 countries – specialists in engineering, marine operations, machinery, integration, testing, and even a dedicated composite development team in Portugal working on the best materials for the buoy. “We have 85 stubborn minds working in the company that put all of their efforts and energy into making sure that it succeeds,” Eunice adds.

The company has a dry testing facility in Stockholm, “and a lot of testing is done here, on land,” as Eunice explains. Hence, the team tests the device's power takeoff system and overall behaviour on land, simulating real-world wave conditions. This allows the scale-up to identify and address potential issues before deploying the device in the ocean.

“We have tested, we have made improvements. We have validated the assumptions. We've progressed through several stages of development, starting with small-scale tank testing, then half-scale testing in Orkney, Scotland, and now full-scale testing in Portugal. Each step has validated our technology, bringing us closer to commercialization.”

Conquering the ocean's power: The road ahead

When asked about the biggest hurdles to scaling up, Eunice highlights the formidable challenge of harnessing nature's raw power: “The harsh ocean environment demands robust devices. So, the design of the machine is done in a way that ensures that it can endure all of those conditions, perform in the ocean, and be maintained.” Hence, trials and testing are integral to the device design process to ensure it works safely in all conditions.

CorPower Ocean's dedication to clean energy and technology development has attracted significant attention from investors. The scale-up secured a EUR 32 million Series B1 funding round in October 2024 and aims for a second close of the funding round in 2025 to reach another EUR 15 to 20 million. Eunice adds that there are several banks among CorePower Ocean’s investors, serving as a significant green flag to be confident in the scale-up’s trajectory of development and growth. 

“That gives a lot of confidence that we are going in the right direction and doing something worthwhile in the wave sector. We're also one of the largest teams in the wave energy sector, if not the largest.”

Regarding CorPower Ocean’s participation in the EIC Scaling Club, Eunice says it’s an important forum to showcase the company’s technology. “There's also a lot of prestige. Being selected to join the EIC Scaling Club means we’ve reached a certain point in developing the company and the technology,” Eunice adds. The scale-up also looks forward to all the connections and collaborations available at the Club – from potential investors to project partners. 

“We want to form fruitful connections with people who might be interested in investing in our technology, buying it, or who can spread awareness of our technology in their networks.”

About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

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