The Electric Stack: Who Wins?
The hosts:
Jonas Bergqvist, Almi Invest GreenTech
Daniel Uusitalo, 4impact Capital
What is this Ripple about?
Our Ripple will explore where real control and value will sit in an increasingly electrified world: in components, in systems, or in the orchestration between hardware and software. Through a Western lens, we want to discuss where durable advantage can actually be built, and whether the most important startups will emerge within layers of the stack or at the intersections between them.
Why this topic timely or urgent in 2026
Because 2026 is a moment when electrification is moving from vision to massive real-world buildout. Capital is being deployed now across energy systems, industrial capacity, and AI infrastructure, but the key question is where control, bottlenecks, and value will sit as the physical stack scales more slowly than software. Understanding who wins across the Electric Stack matters not just for investors and founders, but for Western economies’ ability to build resilient industry quickly enough.
Key questions or challenges being explored
Where does real control in the Electric Stack sit: in components, in systems, or in the orchestration between hardware and software?
Can Western economies build durable advantage by owning individual layers of the stack, or only by integrating them better than others?
Will the most important startups emerge within distinct parts of the stack, or at the intersections between energy, industry, software and compute?
The key tension or debate at the heart of this discussion
At the heart of it is a simple question: where will the real value accrue? Will it sit with companies that own critical parts of the stack such as batteries, power electronics, chips or motors - or with the companies that bring those layers together into working systems? That creates a real tension between backing depth in one layer and backing teams that can win through integration, system design and control of the interface between hardware and software. In a Western context, it also becomes a question of whether the West can build winners through specialization alone, or whether its best shot is in orchestrating fragmented strengths into something truly defensible.
Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?
Founders building in or across batteries, power electronics, electric motors, industrial software, embedded systems, robotics, manufacturing and energy infrastructure would get the most value, especially if they are thinking about where control and defensibility will sit in the next industrial stack. The topic is also highly relevant for investors working in climate, industrial tech, deeptech, mobility, energy, and frontier software, particularly those trying to understand how value will accrue across hardware, software, and system integration.
Beyond that, the conversation should be useful for a smaller number of researchers, operators, and ecosystem builders with direct experience in industrial scaling, supply chains, grid systems, manufacturing, or applied compute. The sweet spot is people who are already close enough to the topic to have a point of view, but broad enough in perspective to engage with both the technical and strategic side of the discussion.