Spiro secures fresh $55M from Chinese investor NewTrails Capital for African EV expansion

African electric mobility company Spiro has successfully closed its latest funding round, raising a total of $270 million. This includes a new investment of $55 million from NewTrails Capital, a Chinese growth-stage investment fund.

This influx of Chinese capital brings not only financial resources but also valuable supply chain expertise to one of Africa’s most well-supported e-mobility platforms.

The investment brings together a strong consortium of global institutional and impact investors backing Spiro, including Impact Fund Denmark, Equitane, FEDA, Nithio, and the Africa Go Green Fund.

This marks the company’s third major capital injection this year alone, following a $215 million equity round closed just three weeks ago and a $50 million round led by Afreximbank earlier in the year, pushing the company’s total funding well past $600 million across all rounds.

NewTrails Capital, which operates with strategic locations in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Nigeria, focuses on emerging markets across Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, aligning its investments with global growth corridors including the Belt and Road Initiative.

Its entry into Spiro signals growing Chinese institutional appetite for African clean energy infrastructure, and brings with it something beyond capital: access to Chinese supply chains that will support the EV maker’s manufacturing and localisation efforts on the continent.

Gagan Gupta, Spiro’s founder and Chairman of Equitane, said the company has firmly moved past its proof-of-concept phase.

“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,” he said. “Partnering with NewTrails 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.”

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Yufan Zhang, Founding Partner of NewTrails Capital, described Spiro’s work as driving an “energy revolution” across mobility in Africa. “Spiro’s core strengths lie in its deeply localised operating capabilities, vertically integrated supply chain, digitally enabled ecosystem, sound unit economics, and strong ability to scale rapidly,” he said.

Why the Chinese investment matters for Spiro’s phase

The EV company currently operates across seven African markets, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, and Cameroon, with more than 100,000 electric motorcycles on the road, over 2,500 battery-swapping stations, and more than 30 million completed battery swaps.

The company has previously identified the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia as its next expansion targets.

NewTrails Capital’s involvement is particularly significant for the company’s manufacturing ambitions. Much of the hardware behind electric mobility, batteries, motors, and charging components still relies heavily on Chinese supply chains globally.

A Chinese investor with direct relationships across that supply chain gives Spiro a more direct route to sourcing components at scale and potentially localising more of its production within Africa, reducing both cost and dependency on long international shipping routes.

Zhang framed the investment as part of a broader trend of Chinese capital and supply chains playing an increasingly central role in Africa’s energy transition.

“Spiro is still a young company, and everything today is only the beginning,” he said. “We look forward to continuing to fulfil our role as a long-term investor, contributing our resources and experience, growing together with Spiro, and helping accelerate Africa’s new energy transition.”

The rapid succession of funding rounds, three significant raises within months, underscores both the scale of capital now flowing into African EV infrastructure and the urgency with which Spiro is racing to capture market share before competitors like Ampersand and ARC Ride close the gap.