London-based Opna, the company building the market infrastructure for critical power equipment in the urgent age of AI, energy security, and climate action, has been announced as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, the Forum's annual list of 100 companies whose technology can reshape an industry. Opna will attend the cohort’s first meeting in China in late June, meeting companies and local stakeholders on the ground.

Opna works with data centre operators, renewables developers, and industrials across Europe to enable them to secure and finance critical power equipment (transformers, switchgear, HV cables, generators) on their project timelines, with capital aligned to how their infrastructure is actually built, and the flexibility to adapt when grid connections, planning, and funding do not all land at once. 

Opna holds verification, matching, and financing on a single, AI-native dataset. A buyer can see qualified manufacturing capacity, real-time slot availability, and verified manufacturer track records across the European-qualified supply base, then finance the order on terms aligned to their project, rather than the factory's billing cycle. This is a new category of market infrastructure, neutral across competing manufacturers, holding all three functions on the same data. No manufacturer, lender, or consultancy can occupy that position, because none can be neutral and do all three at once. 

Each year the World Economic Forum recognises 100 organisations for their cutting edge technologies with the potential to improve the world. The 2026 cohort highlights the major trends in global innovation, from AI infrastructure and robotics to quantum systems, advanced energy, biotechnology, and next-generation materials. The Technology Pioneers community will help scale Opna’s impact and technologies to positively shape our shared future.

To coincide with the WEF announcement, Opna founder and CEO Shilpika (Shilps) Gautam has published a detailed blueprint calling out current industry bottlenecks and the market infrastructure needed to fix it. 

As Europe pushes ahead on energy security, decarbonisation, and affordability, all at once, the supply chains for the power equipment that underpins it all sit at the heart of the agenda. Such continent-defining issues are all beholden to slow moving, vulnerable supply chains. New electrification depends on this critical equipment, as does the existing grid, to keep everything running and scaling. 

While more factories are coming, they will not be enough on their own. As Shilps and Opna see it, the market infrastructure to connect supply to demand has to be built now, or the projects that will shape Europe's future will not energise on time, if at all.

Set against this backdrop, Shilps states: “More factories are coming, and that is a good thing. But they will not start delivering in time to close the power equipment supply squeeze that everyone from data centres to renewables developers and critical facilities like airports are facing. We face a very real and worsening risk of funded projects stalling, clean energy generation not making it onto the grid, and the window to ramp off fossil fuels, electrify our economies, and create growth, resilience and security across Europe, narrowing. 

I see a clear solution: we need a coordination layer for the industry, not just new physical supply; a foundational backbone that holds verification, matching, and financing on the same data, built with the visibility, financing depth, and platform capability that can turn this industry into a healthy market.

I don’t see the coordination gap as a wholly new problem to solve. I have built commodities and financial technology markets before, and seen what coordination layers can do to expand markets and make access, price discovery and transactions infinitely more efficient. This approach - the solution that Opna provides - is one which the power equipment industry needs. Opna is here to build the market.”

Opna’s Blueprint for Industry

Published on 10th June, Shilps’s Blueprint for the power supply industry, ‘Build the market, not just the factories’, charts a clear course for the critical power equipment coordination layer, and carries supporting commentary from industry figures including:

• Dr Pawel Czyzak, Europe Director at Ember and enersite co-founder

• Bridgit Hartland-Johnson, Board Director, energy system integration specialist; formerly Director, Project Development System Integration at Ørsted

• Mark Ducommun, Director at Power System Partners

• Dave Swadling, Transmission and Distribution Infrastructure Specialist; Former Head of Sales, Eclipse Power

• Amelia Henning, Chair of GIGA-42 Holdings; former CEO of Global InterConnection Group; former RBC Capital Markets Director
  
  
  

Shilps has identified four coordination failures holding projects back from energising on time.

• Timing: Buyers commit at financial close, but manufacturers (OEMs) need the orders frozen 12 to 18 months earlier to fit production cycles (Opna market intelligence).

• Payments: OEMs ask for 30 to 50 per cent of equipment value upfront, scaling toward 90 per cent before delivery (OEM payment terms; Opna market intelligence), while developers want to  deploy capital at financial close.

• Demand: OEMs build for the demand they can underwrite: utility-shaped, predictable, standard voltages. Data centres and industrials arrive in different configurations, smaller and less predictable batches, and on quicker timelines; that demand is rising fast (European data centre power demand grows from 87 to 134 TWh by 2030; ENTSO-E, April 2026). Capacity is being built in one shape while demand grows in another.

• Track record: Qualified alternative manufacturers exist, but verification does not travel between buyers, with no shared, transparent information on manufacturer and specific factory quality and verification, so the same checks are repeated on every project (CIGRE TB530, 2013; UK G81 register).

  
  

The fix is one coordination layer holding verification, matching, and financing on the same data: real-time visibility of qualified capacity and open slots, reusable verification of alternative manufacturers, financing matched to how projects are funded, and slots that move when a project slips. OEM order books stay full, and regulators get the evidence base for connection-queue reform.

The Opna Mission

Founded by Shilpika ‘Shilps’ Gautam - a Guinness World Record breaker, climate advocate, 20+ year fintech and financial executive, with a career spanning commodities, carbon markets, and capital markets - Opna is the missing market infrastructure for critical power equipment. 

The global energy transition is not moving as fast as it needs to. Not because clean power projects lack ambition but because the supply chain connecting critical projects to the grid has not kept pace. 

Opna’s mission is to mobilise critical power infrastructure at the speed and scale a decarbonised, flourishing economy requires, and to do it in a way that works for businesses and communities alike. The company sits between the global manufacturing base and the operators, developers, and industrials building Europe's energy infrastructure, providing the verification, matching, and financing that connects qualified supply to the projects that need it, on timelines befitting the scale of urgent energy transition demands. 

OEMs are quoting lead times of four years or more for high-voltage critical power equipment, while front-loading payment structures that can reach 90% of equipment value before delivery (source: Wood Mackenzie, Power Transformer Market Outlook, Q2 2025.) The result is billions in working capital locked against deposits on sites not yet earning, and a generation of developers, EPCs, data centre operators, and grid infrastructure companies stuck in a queue they cannot move.

The shortage at the top of the market is only part of the story. A broader qualified European supply base - approved for grid use - exists but remains largely invisible to buyers because the market has no efficient mechanism to surface it. With global grid procurement running at $400 billion per year (IEA, 2025) and OEM order books at multi-year highs, the constraint is not capital or manufacturing intent. It is coordination.

Opna is building that coordination layer. The company manages sourcing, financing, and delivery end-to-end for projects constrained by critical power equipment supply - taking on the deposit burden itself so that buyer balance sheets remain free and project timelines stay intact. Its model offers verified supply up to 40% faster than conventional procurement, a draw-down payment structure aligned to construction milestones, and flexible slot reservation that allows operators to lock in capacity before final specifications are confirmed.

Grid reform and the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan in the UK, the EU Net-Zero Industry Act, credible-progress connection policies in Ireland, and US Section 232 transformer policy are all moving in the same direction: rewarding projects that can demonstrate verified supply. The regulatory environment is catching up with the urgency of the market already.

About the World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. www.weforum.org 

About the Technology Pioneers

Launched in 2000, the Technology Pioneers is a leading community for early-stage companies from around the world that are shaping the future through breakthrough technologies and innovations. These companies are selected for their potential to have a significant impact on business and society and are invited to engage with public and private sector leaders through the World Economic Forum’s global platform.

The Technology Pioneers community is part of the Innovator Communities at the World Economic Forum, which convene the world's leading global start -ups across different growth stages from early-stage Technology Pioneers to growth-stage Global Innovators and unicorn companies valued at more than $1billion.