Voltframe Closes $60M Series B to Build Battery Swap Stations

Voltframe raised $60 million in a Series B led by Meridian Growth, with participation from two existing investors and a strategic check from a regional fuel retailer whose forecourts will host a portion of the new stations.

The company builds battery-swap infrastructure for electric motorcycles, the workhorse of urban transport across East Africa. A rider pulls into a station, exchanges a depleted pack for a charged one in under 90 seconds, and pays per swap rather than per kilowatt-hour. Voltframe says its network handled 2.1 million swaps last quarter across 140 stations in Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda.

"The battery is 40% of the cost of the bike, and the rider cannot finance it," said chief executive Claudine Uwase. "Take the battery off the purchase price and an electric bike is cheaper than a petrol one on day one. That is the entire business. Everything else is logistics."

Scaling to 900 stations is a real-estate and capital problem more than a technology one, and the fuel-retailer partnership is the tell: Voltframe would rather rent a corner of an existing forecourt than build from scratch. Whether the swap model or home charging wins in these markets is still unsettled — but the company now has enough capital to make the argument at scale.