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Glint Solar just announced its Series A round, 8M USD, led by Smedvig Ventures and with participation from Momentum, Futurum Ventures, and Antler. The rapid rise of solar energy is creating new opportunities for innovation, and Norwegian startup Glint Solar is seizing the moment. With its cutting-edge software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, Glint Solar is helping energy giants like E.ON, Recurrent Energy, and Statkraft streamline the planning and pre-design of solar installations, accelerating the global transition to renewable energy.
Glint Solar’s platform integrates data from various sources to fast-track solar project assessments. By providing features like adaptable layout designs, yield estimates, and GIS-based topographic analysis tailored to specific countries, the software enables solar developers to evaluate potential sites with unparalleled efficiency. The platform’s cloud-based collaboration tools further enhance productivity, allowing teams to access essential project data and even create 3D-rendered layouts "in seconds" for presentation purposes.
Since raising $3 million in seed funding in 2022, Glint Solar has multiplied its customer base nearly tenfold. Now, with an $8 million Series A funding round, the company is poised for even more significant expansion. CEO and co-founder Harald Olderheim revealed plans to grow their presence across Europe, targeting markets in Italy and Spain while maintaining strongholds in France, Germany, the Nordics, and the U.K.
While Glint Solar’s platform initially supported both land-based and floating solar installations, the company has since streamlined its services to concentrate on ground-based projects. Olderheim explained that this shift reflects the larger market demand for ground installations, which have become the primary focus. However, the software remains versatile enough to assist with floating solar and large rooftop arrays as needed.
“If you look at the market, about 60% of the market is utility, large scale. And then about 20% is big rooftops, and 20% is residential. So we are going for the biggest market,” he told TechCrunch. “If you want to make a big impact in the world … we can do it through the utility-scale because that’s much faster if you’re going to build increase the [solar] energy in the world.
“If you think the impact we are making by one solar plant, a big one — like 10 megawatt, maybe with 7,000 or 15,000 solar panels — it’s a very efficient way of growing the energy production fast.”
A significant portion of the new funding will be channelled into product development, specifically expanding the platform’s capabilities to support battery siting. The updated platform will factor in critical variables such as grid capacity, noise levels, protected areas, and compatibility with proposed solar arrays. These enhancements aim to optimize renewable investments and make the planning process even more comprehensive.
Olderheim highlighted a stark reality: while the cost of solar installations has plummeted by 90% over the past decade, projects are still not progressing fast enough to address the urgent challenges of climate change. With disasters like floods, hurricanes, and wildfires intensifying, the need to speed up solar rollouts is more critical than ever.
“It takes time to get all the agreements — with the land owner, with the grid, and with the municipality — to [deliver a solar project], and all these processes take time, so that’s one of the reasons we are doing Glint Solar,” he adds.
The startup focuses on software design to maximize accessibility as another tactic to help remove friction from solar project approvals.
“We are making it very user-friendly so everyone in a team can use one software together and work on this problem to make [project delivery] much faster. And you can share everything — with the land owner, with the grid, with the municipality — so they can easily take decisions much faster with the lower risk.”
Glint Solar’s platform is designed to tackle these challenges head-on. Its modular structure enables users to evaluate sites, organize projects, and design solar parks all within a single tool. Customers report significant benefits, including the ability to assess sites 10x faster and triple their project pipeline compared to traditional methods.
Despite Glint Solar’s impressive capabilities, Olderheim emphasized that software alone cannot solve all the hurdles. Infrastructure investment and regulatory reforms remain vital, particularly in grid capacity and solar permitting areas. These systemic issues must be addressed to fully unlock renewable energy's potential.
“Sometimes it takes five years from a [project] to start to get building,” he points out, adding: “I know the EU is looking at this to reduce it to 12 or 24 months. So I think that’s a very good [start].”
Glint Solar’s Series A is led by Smedvig Ventures, with additional investment from Antler Nordic and Antler Elevate, Futurum Ventures, and Momentum.
In a statement, Jonathan Lerner, partner at Smedvig Ventures, said: “The solar industry has done a great job at developing ways to harvest green energy, but now we need better processes to get these plans in motion. This is the gap that Glint Solar is filling. As one of the first unified products for utility projects on the market, solar developers, engineers, analysts and management can find everything they need to locate the best land spaces quickly and accurately. This is a much-needed evolution from manually trawling through data from multiple sources, saving considerable resources in all-important green energy projects.”
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