The latest investment comes weeks after Spiro announced a $215 million raise backed by investors from Europe and Africa.

With the new funding, the company has completed one of the largest capital raises seen in Africa’s electric mobility sector.

Spiro founder Gagan Gupta said the funding round has lifted the company’s valuation to nearly $1 billion, bringing it close to joining the ranks of Africa’s unicorn startups.

The company said the new capital will support the expansion of its battery-swapping network, manufacturing operations and electric vehicle infrastructure across high-growth African markets.

Commenting on the investment, Gupta said: “I would like to thank NewTrails Capital for believing in Spiro’s model and supporting our unique tech, energy and innovation journey.

“Having deployed 100,000 electric vehicles and 2,500 smart-swap stations across seven active markets, Spiro has firmly moved past the proof-of-concept phase.

“Partnering with NewTrail Capital’s deeply experienced team marks a powerful new chapter for Spiro as we prepare for the next steps of our pan-African and international expansion.”

NewTrails Capital said it sees long-term potential in Africa’s electric mobility market and believes Spiro has built a business model capable of scaling across the continent.

Yufan Zhang, founding partner of NewTrails Capital, said:

“We believe Spiro is driving a profound ‘energy revolution’ across mobility use cases in Africa. This represents not only a vast and highly imaginative market opportunity, but also the potential to grow into an infrastructure-like business that creates meaningful commercial, social, and environmental value.”

He added that Spiro’s strengths include its local operating experience, vertically integrated supply chain and ability to scale quickly across different markets.

The partnership is also expected to strengthen Spiro’s manufacturing and supply chain localisation efforts through closer collaboration with Chinese suppliers.

China is the world’s largest producer of batteries and electric vehicle components, making access to its supply chain increasingly important for companies expanding EV operations.

Founded to enhance electric mobility adoption across Africa, Spiro has grown rapidly in recent years. The company says it has deployed more than 100,000 electric motorcycles and built about 2,500 battery-swapping stations across seven African markets.

Its operations extend beyond vehicle deployment. Spiro runs manufacturing facilities in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, while also operating a battery recycling plant in Nigeria.

The company manages several parts of its value chain, including vehicles, batteries, swapping stations, payments and recycling.

The investment follows another major leadership move at the company. Earlier this month, Spiro appointed Anant Badjatya as Group Chief Executive Officer. Before joining Spiro, Badjatya led Indofast Energy in India, where he oversaw a battery-swapping network of more than 1,800 stations.

Spiro’s latest backers join a list of existing investors that includes FEDA, Impact Fund Denmark, Equitane, Nithio and the Africa Go Green Fund.

The new funding provides additional firepower as it expands its electric mobility network across Africa and strengthens its presence in a market that is attracting growing interest from global investors.

The post Spiro Nears Unicorn Status as $55M Investment Pushes Funding Round to $270M appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

The partnership strengthens Lagos State’s transportation ecosystem and accelerates the shift toward a structured, technology-enabled and financially bankable mobility sector.

Over the past 10 months, Lagride has rebuilt its entire onboarding and operational system for drivers, known as Lagride Captains.

The platform introduced a performance-led Drive To Earn structure supported by weekly and monthly rental models.

This system has generated consistent 90-day usage and repayment data across the fleet, allowing United Bank for Africa and other financial institutions to assess driver performance with accuracy, confidence and transparency.

Eligibility for the Drive To Own programme is based on clearly defined performance thresholds, repayment discipline, safety compliance and service consistency.

Through this approach, Lagride has emerged as the most structured, data-driven and credit-ready mobility platform in Nigeria, setting a new benchmark for bankable driver financing and asset ownership.

“Transportation is the backbone of Africa’s economic future, and platforms like Lagride are creating the blueprint for how African cities can build modern, technology-driven and people-centred mobility systems.”

EV Infrastructure Expansion

As part of the milestone, Lagride also unveiled an expanded electric vehicle charging facility in Alausa, Lagos, reinforcing its long-term commitment to clean, future-ready mobility.

The expanded infrastructure is designed to support the growing electric vehicle segment within Lagride’s fleet, reduce operational downtime and enable more efficient, sustainable transportation at scale.

By pairing driver financing with practical EV infrastructure, Lagride is positioning itself as a mobility platform built not just for today’s Lagos, but for the next generation of urban transport.

Chairman’s Vision: From Drivers to Investors

Speaking on the landmark partnership, Chief Diana Chen, chairman, Lagride, stated that the ultimate goal of the Drive To Own programme is not to keep drivers behind the wheel indefinitely, but to move them up the economic value chain.

She explained that Lagride is intentionally designed to help drivers evolve from operators into owners, and ultimately into investors and partners managing multiple vehicles and teams of people.

“Lagride was created to give Lagos a modern, disciplined and technology-driven mobility system while ensuring that drivers are not left behind. The goal is for drivers who we call Captains to become business owners, fleet partners and mobility investors, not just drivers. This 100 million dollar partnership with United Bank for Africa moves thousands of captains closer to owning productive assets, managing multiple cars and building stronger financial futures. It is a major step forward in our commitment to driver prosperity and the future of smart mobility in Lagos.”

She noted that the Drive To Own programme is a starting point, not an endpoint, laying the foundation for long-term enterprise building, governance and scalable wealth creation within the mobility sector.

UBA’s Perspective

Delivering remarks at the event, Oliver Alawuba, group managing director and CEO, United Bank for Africa, shared a personal reflection on his father, who had been a professional driver.

He spoke about transportation as a source of dignity, livelihood and social mobility, and why UBA considers the sector critical to inclusive economic growth.

He also recounted his reaction when Chief Diana Chen first shared the Lagride vision, describing it as clear, ambitious and strongly aligned with UBA’s commitment to financing real-sector projects that create jobs, build assets and deliver long-term economic impact.

According to him, Lagride represents the kind of transformational, well-governed and data-backed initiative that UBA exists to support across Africa.

Event Speakers and Signatories

The event featured contributions from key stakeholders across Lagride, UBA and CIG Motors Group, including:

• Chief Diana Chen, chairman, Lagride
• Ademola Adeyemi, Lagride Academy and Driver Management Team Lead
• Dorathy Akpan Etim, Lagride Captain on the Drive To Own Scheme with UBA
• Brigadier General Chukwuemeka Udaya, special adviser to the Chairman on Government Relations, who signed on behalf of CIG Motors
• Ifeanyi Abraham, PR director, Lagride, who hosted the event

Other Dignitaries in Attendance

Also present were senior executives and leaders from UBA, Lagride and CIG Motors Group, including:

Wei Bin, Chief Operations Officer, Lagride; Babatunde Ajayi, head of SME Banking; Alero Ladipo, group head, Marketing and Corporate Communications; Olufemi Osobajo, head of Segments and Channels Marketing; Olufemi Bamigbetan, head, REDTV; Ramon Nasir, head of Media Relations; Abiodun Coker, Media Relations, and Adetola Adeduwon, head of Events.

From CIG: Eniola Olutimehin, chief operating officer, CIG Motors; Dr Ram, chief financial officer, CIG
Mrs Manyo Pam, general manager, Operations, CIG; Mr Martin, managing director, Gree, and Mr Roamen, managing director, Lontor.

The partnership underscores a shared commitment by Lagride, United Bank for Africa and CIG Motors Group to build a disciplined, scalable and investor-ready mobility ecosystem where drivers can grow into business leaders, asset owners and long-term partners in Lagos’ transportation future.

The post Lagride Secures $100 Million UBA Financing Facility to Expand its Drive to Own Programme appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Nigeria is witnessing a growing interest in EVs, spurred by the government’s push for clean energy and private-sector initiatives.

Although EV adoption remains in its early stages, efforts to establish a sustainable EV ecosystem are gaining traction, with projections indicating significant market growth over the next decade.

In terms of infrastructure growth, the number of available charging stations in Nigeria has gradually increased.

As of recent years, only a handful of charging points exist in urban areas such as Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt.

However, government-backed initiatives like solar-powered charging stations are expected to accelerate growth. Despite this progress, the ratio between available charging stations and electric vehicles remains wide, signaling a need for rapid infrastructure expansion to support EV adoption.

As charging stations become more widespread, new challenges arise, especially when it comes to protecting them and their customers.

This is where smart video and video analytics come into play. To store, analyze, and enable real-time alerts, these systems must come with an appropriate data storage infrastructure providing the capacity, performance, security, and resilience for current and future EV stations.

Primed for Success: Smart Video and EV Charging Stations

When it comes to the successful expansion of charging station infrastructure, an important component that may not always be considered is a reliable monitoring system to protect the facilities.

With the increasing number of charging points in both urban and remote areas, operators need to have an overview of activity at the sites at all times.

To pave the way for safety and success, EV station owners in Nigeria are turning to AI-enabled security cameras that offer innovative features to revolutionize the way operators protect their property.

These smart video devices can help distinguish between natural elements, vehicles, animals, as well as people, and can send alerts in the case of unforeseen events or unusual behavior.

With ever-improving resolution quality, from 4K to 8K and beyond, as well as advancements like motion sensors, new cameras enable object tracking, significantly reducing false alarms.

Over recent years, EV stations globally, including in Nigeria, have faced risks such as cable and battery theft, vandalism, and other forms of destruction. This not only leads to financial losses but also affects the reliability and availability of the stations.

Video analysis can help protect against and prevent vandalism before it occurs or catch the perpetrators in the act.

This is because AI-enabled cameras can optically zoom in, analyze the target automatically, and take a picture or record a video of the conspicuous event.

In addition, intelligent video can use algorithms to detect other threats such as fire or animals. For example, a situation can be assessed if a wildfire or electrical fault has broken out near the charging station, and fire detection can be useful to take effective measures against the spread of potentially dangerous events and minimize the damage to the station and surrounding areas.

It also allows EV owners to detect approaching animals, such as stray livestock, which could potentially cause damage to the installation.

These AI-enabled smart video systems not only place new demands on the equipment but also on the data storage infrastructure powering video analytics.

Capacity, latency, and bandwidth become crucially important when recording, streaming, and analyzing high-resolution footage to take quick action.

Data Storage is Fueling EV Charging Station Security

Storage is a critical component to unlocking the full potential of smart video data.

When designing infrastructure, EV station owners in Nigeria need high-capacity storage at the edge in the camera, in the server or recorder, as well as on the cloud or the data center that offers low latency, high performance, and quick scalability. Another important consideration in smart video is video and data retention time.

This could vary according to regulatory compliance, redundancy and backup practices, or longevity or reliability of the storage solution.

This means that any storage solution for smart video features should enable long-term storage without compromising performance while complying with data protection regulations.

Translating these requirements into reality, a 360° smart video camera recording in full HD at 25 frames per second (fps) for 24 hours generates approximately 2.5TB of data over a specified retention period, usually around 90 days.

To have sufficient storage capacity for these daily streams of an EV charging station, the backend must have at least 225TB.

To meet these demands, EV station operators in Nigeria need customized storage solutions that support these new AI workloads and associated storage requirements.

As video analytics and deep learning for today’s intelligent video solutions are performed both on-premise and in the cloud, it is important to provide a scalable, cost-effective, and durable, yet high-performance storage infrastructure.

EV station operators can obtain highly resilient, durable on-camera storage of up to 256 gigabytes (GB) in the form of microSD cards at the edge of the network, supporting card health monitoring capabilities, preemptive storage management, and reliability for continuous 24/7 high-definition video recording.

Specially designed microSD cards, such as those from WD Purple, can continue recording even if the connection to the network video recorder (NVR) is interrupted. For reliable storage at the core, decision-makers should look to purpose-built hard disk drives (HDDs) that offer up to 22TB of storage and are equipped with advanced features.

These enable up to 32 AI streams for deep learning analysis within the system while reducing image failures.

In addition, these HDDs, designed for intelligent video environments, are also optimized to handle up to 64 additional single-stream HD cameras, allowing for easy scalability as requirements change.

As the uptake of EVs continues to grow in Nigeria, charging station owners should set themselves up for success and position themselves to benefit from the investment in this growing infrastructure.

An important part of this will be the right smart video infrastructure that allows operators to monitor and improve the security and functionality of their stations, as well as detect and respond to events in real time.

As part of this, video data and data storage will continue to fuel the potential in this industry to ensure safety, security, and incident prevention.

The post Smart Video is Defining Future EV Infrastructure appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.