Exclusive: Investors back Gevi to bring ‘self-learning’ wind turbine to your rooftop

Over the past two decades, dozens of startups have promised to bring all sorts of weird and wonderful wind-powered contraptions to market.

Yet despite the hype, small wind never took off the way solar did. High costs, low efficiency, and noisy mechanics turned the dream of personal wind power into more of a gimmick than a grid solution.

Gevi, an Italian startup founded in 2022, believes it might finally overcome some of those obstacles.

'Self-learning' wind turbine

Spun from research at the Università di Pisa, Gevi has developed a vertical-axis wind turbine controlled by an AI system that reacts to wind speed, direction, and turbulence in real time.

The company claims this can boost energy capture by up to 60% compared to the best vertical wind turbine currently on the market.

“Our system continuously adapts to changing wind conditions, every hundredth of a second, which helps both efficiency and reliability,” CEO and co-founder Emanuele Luzzati tells Impact Loop.

According to the founder, the turbine’s active pitch control can also reduce structural stress during heavy winds, potentially extending the lifespan of the equipment.

Luzzati notes that the system is intended to complement solar installations, smoothing out periods when solar output dips, such as at night or on cloudy days.

“For individual users or small businesses, a single turbine can provide a meaningful share of their electricity needs," Luzzati, who has a PhD in flui mechanics, explains.

"For companies or energy communities, multiple units can create modular, scalable systems capable of producing significant on-site renewable power.”

Cash runway

Gevi recently secured €2.7m in seed funding in a round led by 360 Capital, CDP Venture Capital, and UK-based NextSTEP One. The fresh capital will fund industrialisation and further R&D.

Giuseppe Imburgia, recently appointed general manager, will lead the company’s scale-up efforts alongside the founders, focusing on production and international expansion.

Gevi currently makes its turbines in-house, with a capacity to produce around 100 turbines per month. “If the market response leads to higher volumes, we’ll evaluate partnerships or selective licensing, but always with the goal of preserving the integrity of our technology and its performance standards,” says Luzzati.

For now, Gevi represents a small but potentially intriguing experiment in the quest to make urban wind power more viable. The turbines might not be a silver bullet for distributed energy, but they suggest that innovation in micro wind – long considered a tough nut to crack – is far from over.