X1 Wind closes fourth funding round led by Grow Ventures and Avançsa

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X1 Wind, a Barcelona floating wind company founded in 2017 by researchers who met at MIT, has closed its fourth funding round. Grow Ventures led it and takes roughly 8% of the share capital. Avançsa, the Generalitat de Catalunya's public investment company, takes a similar stake. Existing backers Technip Energies, the EIC Fund and CDTI Innvierte converted instruments they had provided earlier, so part of the new round consists of old money in new form.

The round is meant to carry the company from proving its technology to selling it. The next step is NextFloat, a project led by Technip Energies and X1 Wind, which will put the X100, an 8.5 MW platform with a 160-metre rotor, at the PlemCat test site off Catalonia. The site received its environmental approval in July, the design holds a DNV Statement of Compliance, and manufacturing is expected to start in 2027. X1 Wind says it already has contracts for the X150, a larger version for 15 to 20 MW turbines, on major projects in Europe and Asia.

The design is a tension-leg platform: vertical synthetic lines hold it to the seabed under tension instead of letting it float on the water it displaces. In effect the platform is held down rather than held up, and that takes much less steel. Primary steel comes to about 1,500 tonnes, against 2,500 to 3,000 for comparable floaters, and the seabed footprint shrinks. "Our platform needs 20 by 20 metres, while traditional ones need between 800 and 1,000," said chief executive Álex Raventós. The turbine faces downwind, so the platform turns into the wind by itself, with no motors. The company claims up to 50% lower CAPEX than recent pre-commercial floating projects in Europe. It also says its patented Quick Connector can connect or disconnect a platform in one day, cutting hook-up times by more than 80% compared with pre-commercial projects worldwide. A smaller X30 prototype was installed at PLOCAN off Gran Canaria in 2023. It became the first floating wind system in Spain to deliver electricity to the grid.