In this episode of Leaders in Cleantech, I speak with Juergen Mayerhofer, CEO and co-founder of enspired, the Vienna-based company using fully automated, AI-driven trading to optimise flexible power assets – especially grid-scale batteries – across multiple European markets.

Juergen shares how he stumbled into energy via Austrian gas market liberalisation, fell in love with physical energy systems, and eventually founded enspired in early 2020 with the simple but powerful idea that flexibility is the key resource for integrating more renewables. We talk about how the company has scaled from its first pump storage and thermal assets in Germany to managing ~5 GW of flexibility (including over 1.3 GW of batteries), now active across ten markets and expanding into new geographies.

We dig into why enspired thinks like a software and R&D company rather than a classic trading house, how they use automation, machine learning and reinforcement learning in practice, and why they’ve chosen to publish independently verified revenue performance instead of leaning on AI buzzwords. Juergen also reflects on the realities of founding just before COVID, expanding rapidly across borders, and building a diverse, high-performance culture designed to move into new countries in weeks, not years.

About Juergen Mayerhofer:

enspired CEO and co-founder Juergen Mayerhofer holds an MBA in energy management and has worked in the energy sector for over 20 years, contributing to the expansion of renewables in the grid in various expert positions. Under his bold and devoted leadership, enspired evolved from a small-scale startup with a workforce in the single digits into a successful institution with global recognition. As an enthusiast and first mover in BESS optimization, Juergen is a highly respected and trusted figure in his field as well as the power industry at large.

About enspired:

Vienna-based innovator enspired is known for pioneering automated energy trading and cross-market battery storage optimization across Europe with an advanced technical infrastructure running on billions of data points, AI, machine learning, and reinforcement learning. The self-developed optimization platform is operated 100% in-house, which makes it highly flexible in adapting to new markets and changing market conditions. By optimizing the power assets of their customers across all available energy markets, enspired unlocks essential flexibility to integrate more renewables while providing grid stability, enspired's commercial strategy achieves maximum revenues with minimum degradation, extending asset life and profit over time. As the first and only BESS optimizer with published portfolio performance, enspired is tackling the lack of monetary transparency in the industry by granting insight into real, independently confirmed revenues. In 2024 alone, enspired enabled 2.5 million tons of emission savings and aims to integrate 50 GW of flexibility by 2035 to achieve the ultimate goal of accelerating the energy transition.

Social links:
Juergen Mayerhofer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juergenmayerhofer/
enspired on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enspired/
enspired website: https://www.enspired-trading.com/

About Hyperion Search:
At Hyperion Search, we specialize in building world-class teams for the cleantech and energy transition sectors. We focus on leadership roles but also recruit strategically critical individual contributors who drive business growth. Whether you’re a founder scaling a startup, a board member guiding a scaleup, a VC/PE investor, or a corporation committed to energy and mobility transitions, we find the talent that will deliver impactful, sustainable results.

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hyperion-search-ltd
Website: www.hyperionsearch.com

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