Mario Kohle

Mario Kohle always wanted Enpal to be more than just a solar company. When he launched the Berlin-based startup in 2017, the serial entrepreneur—who previously founded a successful e-­commerce platform—heard the skeptics. “People were like, ‘Are you crazy, shifting from software to a hardware-intensive company?’” he says. But his strategic vision was bigger than the residential rooftop arrays, heat pumps, batteries, and smart meters the firm installs across Germany and, since 2023, Italy. His ultimate goal is to stitch together all that hardware (as well as customers’ EVs) to run a vast “virtual power plant” that efficiently manages supply and demand to offer electricity so cheap that joining Enpal’s energy ecosystem is a no-brainer for consumers. “We are building Europe’s largest decentralized giga battery,” he says. “In two years, we’ll provide enough capacity to replace a nuclear power plant.” ­Germany’s ­first ­greentech unicorn, now valued at $2.4 billion, Enpal doubled its revenue in 2023, becoming Germany’s largest heat-pump installer and smart-meter operator, as well as Europe’s largest residential solar installer.