Image this: Quick-growing startup raises a excessive eight-figure spherical. Then, a yr later, it decides to boost one other. Traders line up, and this time they pledge more cash whereas giving the corporate a wholesome valuation bump.

What’s unsuitable with this image? It’s 2023, a yr during which loads of buyers have rolled up the welcome mat, and the corporate in query isn’t a fintech or a web3 or even a SaaS startup. However bucking the pattern is Span, a hardware-focused local weather tech firm that’s making an attempt to interchange the house electrical panel, a tool most individuals solely take into consideration when the hair dryer causes the lights to exit.

Just a bit over a yr in the past, Span introduced that it had closed a $90 million Collection B that valued the corporate at $410 million pre-money. Immediately, the startup is saying a $96 million Collection B2 that values it at $600 million. (Why B2 and never an extension? As a result of the corporate was in a position to increase its valuation following the preliminary Collection B.) The spherical was led by Wellington Administration with participation by current buyers together with Congruent Ventures, Capricorn Funding Group and Alexa Fund.

“As we have been taking a look at each our personal progress aspirations and extraneous elements,” Arch Rao, founder and CEO of Span, instructed TechCrunch+, “and as we have a look at packages just like the Inflation Discount Act, we truly see the chance to speed up over the course of this yr or subsequent yr. And that’s what prompted the concept of bringing in further capital.”

The Inflation Reduction Act hasn’t modified the corporate’s enterprise mannequin, but it surely has modified its enterprise plans, Rao stated. “It’s helped us pull ahead our addressable market by at the least 5 years.”