This Entrepreneur Raised $147 Million To Develop Wave Energy Technology that Generates Clean Electricity From Ocean Waves

For most people, growing up in the calm landscapes of southern Sweden might not trigger dreams of disrupting the global energy system. But Patrik Möller has never been like most people. In a riveting interview, he talks about his journey through building, scaling, and financing CorPower Ocean.

Patrik traces his experiences in building a team from different nationalities, ideating concepts, bringing in inventors and scientists, and developing and proving the technology in various stages.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

Born in Sweden on the Danish Border and Early Years

Born in southern Sweden near Denmark, Patrik’s natural instinct to question the status quo was evident early on. “A bit like my dad perhaps,” he recalls, “I always questioned everything just because it says something in a book doesn’t mean it’s the only way.”

That critical mindset, nurtured through school and refined at UC Berkeley, would become a defining trait throughout Patrik’s career. At university, he was exposed to more entrepreneurial activities in progress that inspired him.

Patrik considers his year at Berkeley to be one of his best. There, he had the opportunity to meet and interact with extremely interesting people. Living in the International House in Berkeley, he spent time with hundreds of people from different countries worldwide.

This exposure, immersed in a world of radical thinking and entrepreneurial spirit, would shape Patrik’s mindset and approach to team building.

What began as a passion for problem-solving in chemical engineering and microfabrication evolved into a mission to redefine how the world powers itself, first through semiconductors, and now through the untapped potential of ocean waves.

Patrik began to think differently—not just about technology but also about the kind of life he wanted to lead. The corporate path no longer seemed appealing.

Instead, a bold idea emerged: to simplify semiconductor manufacturing by removing redundant steps in the metallization process. Essentially, the top layers of silicon manufacturing.

10 Years of Lessons in Semiconductor Innovation – Replisaurus Technologies

Returning to Sweden, Patrik turned his master’s thesis into a company. Using a stepwise approach, he got a proof point for the principle and then registered the company. Along with two university friends, he creatively bootstrapped their deep tech startup.

The trio tapped into soft funding, scholarships, PhD support, and research grants, maintaining a low living cost in the initial few years. The lean approach allowed them to avoid raising substantial funding and early dilution–a lesson Patrik values to this day.

They raised a total of €50M ($56.8M) to €60M ($68.16M), secured strategic investors from Silicon Valley, and expanded operations across Europe. In 2002, the startup ecosystem was almost non-existent in Sweden, but they got support from an incubator in Stockholm called Sting (Stockholm Innovation and Growth).

Today, Sting is the largest incubator in Sweden. But back then, the VC financing ecosystem was in its early stages, and many of the big exits had yet to happen. Patrik recalls how they engaged a few business angels from the beginning.

These people were operators, having built companies themselves. They were very helpful in providing some of the initial capital and their experience. A few years later, Patrik and his co-founders were able to get university-related technology investment funding.

Eventually, bigger names like Northzone of Scandinavia and Wellington Partners from Germany joined. Thanks to the investments secured, they scaled the company quickly, purchasing a factory in France and growing the team.

Impact of the 2008 Lehman Collapse

But just as Patrik and his team were ramping up production, the 2008 Lehman collapse hit like a tidal wave. Strategic buyers pulled back, cash dried up, and a promising bidding war for their technology fizzled. Looking back, Patrik reveals how he and his co-founders downsized a little.

They estimated that they would need a couple of years of pilot production before they could start selling in larger volumes. They had a few manufacturers with their equipment in piloting, but that would require a new financing round, which would take two years.

Eventually, the board and co-founders decided to sell the technology, expecting to get a good deal. But the market conditions were just not favorable. Instead of a marquee exit, the technology was sold to an outfit in Luxembourg.

The experience was humbling but also educational. “Timing is everything,” Patrik reflects. Also, don’t give away too much too early. If you’re a long-term entrepreneur, delay VC until you’ve built value.”

He suggests improving the technology and making it very attractive in the financial markets before inviting investors. He carried that lesson with him when building his second company.

Patrik also learned that planning for the long term is important, especially in the deep tech space, where things take a long time. Founders typically see some of the tough cycles during the lifetime of their companies or projects.

Betting on the Ocean with CorPower Ocean

After stepping away from semiconductors, Patrik nearly returned to corporate life until a chance meeting with InnoEnergy led him to a medical doctor named Stig Lundbäck.

Inspired by the pumping principles of the human heart, Stig had invented a new way to generate energy from ocean waves–a radically new way to make wave energy technology work. Initially skeptical, Patrik soon saw the brilliance behind the concept.

Until now, research into wave energy has yielded no real results. But when Patrik and Stig started working on it, they realized they could change the equation to make wave energy survive big storms, which had been the major challenge.

The duo also found that their technology could produce a lot more power compared to the size and cost of the equipment. At the same time, they were aware of the complexities of the ocean, which is one of the most demanding environments on Earth.

Drawing Information from the Leading Centers

Patrik and Stig decided to learn everything they could about the field. They went to some of the leading knowledge centers like Lisbon, Edinburgh, and Trondheim–cities where companies and universities have made the most serious attempts into wave energy.

The duo interacted with people who had compiled the knowledge to understand what worked and what didn’t. Eventually, drawing from Patrik’s semiconductor experience, he and Stig decided to approach wave energy like the pharma industry.

They would define the five stages of validation, raise capital stage-by-stage, and prove the physics at every level. They had a bankable product, and a number of European initiatives and projects had already started defining these stages. Ocean energy has become a very established methodology.

Patrik and Stig’s new venture, CorPower Ocean, was launched in 2012 with a clear plan to avoid the pitfalls of past wave energy failures. It was one of the first companies to adopt wave energy.

Building with Intention: A Five-Stage Journey to Commercial Proof

Rather than jumping into large-scale manufacturing, CorPower Ocean started small—with benchtop prototypes and tank tests to validate core metrics like energy-per-ton efficiency. They invested a few hundred dollars sourced from a few people to fund stage one.

They also focused on other metrics like energy-per-force and proxies for cost efficiency in volume production. Once Patrik and Stig started scaling equipment to volume, they were confident they had completed the first stage with great results.

By the third stage, they had scaled up to around 40 people. European, Swedish, and Scottish grants and non-dilutive funding powered much of the early work, including a half-scale machine tested in the Orkney Islands in Northern Scotland.

Between 2012 and 2018, CorPower completed three development stages without inviting VCs—an incredible feat in deep tech. Only after achieving critical proof points did they raise equity rounds.

Investors like Almi GreenTech, SEB GreenTech, Midroc, an infrastructure company with a VC arm, and InnoEnergy supported the company. In total, €130M ($147M) has been raised for CorPower Ocean, with an additional €90M ($102.24M) secured for affiliated projects.

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The company’s wave energy machines are now powering the Portuguese grid, having withstood 18.5-meter ocean storms.

The Fundraising Journey

Patrik explains that they did their stage four financing when they had proof of concept from the half-scale back in 2020-2021. At this time, the cleantech market was booming, and they could easily raise more funding to do the full-scale proof of concept.

Patrik and Stig raised €20M ($22.72M) of the total financing in equity and then topped it off in non-dilutive funding. Since then, they have reached a proof point on the commercial-scale kit. Patrik explains that they won’t scale to bigger machines.

It’s now about industrializing and scaling the technology. To make that happen, Patrik and CorPower Ocean closed a €32M ($36.35M) series B round led by NordicNinja VC. NordicNinja is a London-based investor with primarily Japanese limited partners (LPs) investing in Nordic cleantech companies.

Other investors include Santander Alternative Investments, SEB Greentech, Iberis Capital, and InnoEnergy. Cisco also participated as a strategic investor in powering data centers with 24/7 clean electricity. Patrik reveals they secured €17.5M (~$19.91M) from EIC (European Innovation Council) in January.

CorPower Ocean will close up to €20M ($22.72M) before the end of 2025. Financial and industrial investors who know the space well will participate, as Patrik says. He anticipates they will have to work hard to raise funding for ambitious deeptech and cleantech companies in the current market.

Business Model: Clean Energy as a Service

CorPower Ocean operates as a Wave Energy OEM, delivering “CorePack” clusters to utilities and project developers and supporting them during the development of wave farm projects. Customer wave farm projects typically run as SPVs.

CorPower Ocean manufactures and supplies the equipment and then helps customers install it. Thus, they work with marine operators with vessels to install the equipment offshore. Customers are essentially asset owners, while CorPower operates the assets for them.

From installation to 20+ years of operation and maintenance, CorPower ensures performance and uptime, turning wave energy into a reliable component of global clean energy portfolios.

Their value proposition is to lower the cost of 24/7 clean baseload power by complementing intermittent wind and solar sources. For data centers, industries, and grids struggling to achieve net zero, CorPower’s technology could be the missing link.

Culture Through Diversity

While building a company designed to serve a global market, Patrik has quietly fostered a highly international team. With offices in Sweden, Portugal, and Norway, CorPower’s team represents 23 nationalities.

“We didn’t set out with a diversity quota,” he says. “We just searched globally for the best minds and the best experiences to complement those brains. And that led us here.”

This diversity has proved invaluable, not only for innovation but also for navigating the intricacies of global wave energy markets.

CorPower Ocean has a dynamic environment, combining experiences and cultures from different places, which is exceptionally healthy for the working environment and builds a strong culture.

Patrik explains that the European market is on the Atlantic coast and includes countries like Norway, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal. In the US, it’s primarily the West Coast. Having different nationalities on the team with local connections is a significant advantage.

The Long-Term Vision: A New Industrial Giant

What does a future powered by wave energy look like? By 2050, Patrik envisions wave energy becoming the third-largest global energy source, rivaling wind and solar.

Wave energy will take over the role of providing stability to the energy system, running data centers or big industries that need 24/7 energy profiles to run. The opportunity is bigger than all the nuclear or hydro capacity of the world.

“The prize,” he says, “is the ability to leave fossil behind. You can get to 100% renewables faster and at lower cost when adding wave to a mix of wind and solar. Wave fills the gaps.”

CorPower plans to become the Vestas of the sea, targeting €50B ($56.80B) in annual sales and creating thousands of jobs across a global manufacturing ecosystem. That’s the industrial and economic value, as Patrik predicts.

Solar and wind are currently the cheapest energy sources worldwide in most locations. However, to progress to the next penetration stage from 50% and 60% to 70%, 80%, 90%, or 100%, more options are needed to fill the gaps.

Storage is part of the picture, but much higher cost efficiency and system efficiency can be reached with more complementary generation sources that are already at the generation stage.

Patrik would like to see a world where we leave fossil fuel behind, where, as yet, we are complementing and filling the gaps with alternatives.

Words to a Younger Self

If Patrik could sit down with his younger self, about to launch his first startup, his advice would be simple yet profound. It takes time to make the big changes to add disruptive technology.

“It’s not a sprint. It’s an ultra-marathon. You need structure, patience, and the ability to make small, compounded gains that add up over time. But maybe it’s also good to be slightly naive when you start—otherwise, you might never take the leap.”

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Startups are ultra-marathons, not sprints—structure and patience are critical for success in deep tech.
• Delaying VC funding until meaningful proof points are reached helps preserve long-term ownership and control.
• Wave energy, if harnessed effectively, could become the third-largest energy source globally by 2050.
• CorPower Ocean used a five-stage validation model, inspired by pharma, to de-risk technology development.
• Early funding was creatively sourced through grants, soft funding, and research programs to avoid early dilution.
• Building a diverse, international team emerged naturally from prioritizing the best global talent.
• Past failures in wave energy informed CorPower’s methodical approach, grounded in physics, proof, and resilience.

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