Energia Review

Ratings at a Glance

Energia Product Offering

Energia leverages its AI-powered alternative investment platform to grant energy investors and traders exclusive access to the private energy market in a cost-efficient and hassle-free manner. Through Energia, you can invest in traditional energy assets like curated packages of diversified proven, developed and producing oil and natural gas wells, as well as green energy projects like battery storage, solar & wind farms. 

This energy investing platform focuses on providing retail investors exclusive access to asset-level energy investments sponsored by top-tier investment firms. Offerings on Energia enable investors to own interests in specific proven and developed natural resources projects. These types of investments allow individual investors to own fractional stakes in real assets through a fund structure and get exposure to the energy sector based on the performance of underlying assets and commodity prices. 

How do offerings on Energia differ from traditional stock investments in publicly-traded companies like ExxonMobil or Chevron? Energia offerings prioritize cash flow for investors, unlike traditional stock investments where profits may be reinvested in the business or deployed elsewhere. 

With offerings available through Energia’s platform, investors invest in low-load funds that own real-world assets that are designed to pay distributions back to investors as soon as possible. This is done to minimize friction for investors and maximize cash back to the investor.  

How Energia Works

Energia works with experienced and top-tier investment managers like Donovan Ventures, which sponsor packages on the retail platform. These sponsors employ Energia's AI-powered analytical technology to identify, curate and select packages to be offered through the platform. Sponsors often review hundreds of different assets before they are selected and included in offerings available through the Energia platform. 

Energia’s analytical platform is highly sophisticated, leveraging data on over 160,000 individual assets located across the United States. Their platform uses machine-learning and AI to quantify risk exposures for sponsors and help them ensure diversification for offerings. Sponsors also use Energia’s technology to stress test the expected performance of offerings based on a variety of factors including changes to commodity prices, operating costs and more. Modern machine learning techniques, including neural networks and gradient boosting algorithms, are employed to enhance forecasting accuracy. The platform also uses industry-standard valuation frameworks to generate real-time valuations of assets and determine the best price to pay for assets to be included in an offering. 

Overall, these detailed approaches help sponsors deliver more elevated accuracy and precision forecasting for their offerings and investors.

Once a sponsor identifies an asset that meets its internal investing criteria, the sponsor creates a fund-specific Special Purpose Entity (SPE) to hold interests on behalf of investors. These SPEs are then made available to accredited investors directly through the Energia.com portal, where investors can directly invest in these funds. 

Once fundraising for an SPE is complete, sponsors close the offering and acquire assets using the capital that has been raised. Asset interests are transferred under the SPE’s name and cash flows from assets begin coming back to the SPE. Sponsors then provide monthly distributions back to investors. To enhance transparency, Energia’s platform offers frequent updates to investors to ensure visibility at every step of the investing process. 

Behind the Scenes

Energia employs a technical team of more than 15 data scientists, petroleum engineers, valuation experts and software developers that are making weekly updates and improvements to its technology platform. 

Since 2022, Energia has also licensed its technology suite to investment banks and has helped institutions close more than $1.5 billion worth of asset-backed securities.

Educational Resources 

Energia provides comprehensive educational resources encompassing informative content, market insights, product updates, investment fundamentals, energy investing and the latest news. 

Starting with a “How It Works” section, you can see exactly what you’re getting into. Once you understand the process, you can learn more at your own pace. 

These valuable tools facilitate learning, informing investors about market trends and providing the insights needed to make informed decisions in the dynamic energy investing landscape. Ultimately, it empowers them to stay ahead of industry developments, manage risks effectively and seize opportunities for potential returns.

The expanded Help Center also comes with a news and insights section that features content written in-house that explains what’s going on in the energy sector and the wells in which you might invest. 

You can contact Energia by phone at (713) 581-7477 or by sending an email to the support team with just a click. The phone support channel is an excellent choice if you want to resolve your complaints or questions urgently. You can also find answers to commonly asked questions without contacting the support team by checking the FAQ, the online Help Center Portal or the chatbot. If you need further assistance, the chatbot will forward you to a member of the customer service team. The platform maintains an active presence on multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. This provides an alternative means of contacting the support team and asking questions. 

Energia is built from the ground up with robust security, which is understandable for a fintech investment platform. The platform is hosted on Amazon's AWS cloud infrastructure — an industry leader in cloud computing services with multiple certifications and audits, including SOC-2, SOC-1, ISO 27001 and FedRAMP. Energia uses diverse security products and services available on AWS, including Inspector and GuardDuty. Sensitive customer information, including passwords and social security numbers, is encrypted at a minimum of 128 bits using hashing algorithms like bcrypt and is never stored in clear text. 

The platform provides multifactor authentication to prevent unauthorized account access and mandates users to enable it. Additional security measures include website penetration testing, continuous internal and external monitoring, third-party security audits and defensive measures like firewalls. Personal Identifiable Information (PII) collected during signup is used for customized service delivery and marketing purposes. The platform will never share or sell customer data to a third party without consent except in compliance with local judicial precedent.  

The minimum investment is $10,000. Fractional shares represent a portion of a company's stock or assets, allowing investors to buy high-priced assets with significantly less money. Either way, you need to be accredited. That’s all.  

To be considered an accredited investor, you must meet specific criteria as defined by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 501 of Regulation D. One of these criteria includes "having a minimum individual income of over $200,000 (or $300,000 combined with a spouse or partner) in each of the preceding two years, with an expectation of maintaining this income level in the current year." 

The implication is that only reasonably high-net-worth individuals can qualify as accredited investors and, as such, can join the Energia platform. Suppose you're looking to take advantage of the investment opportunity Energia provides immediately. In that case, you can contact the company via phone and ask questions about pricing. It's also possible that once you register and are accepted on the platform, you can then access information regarding pricing, available markets and more.

Energia advertises its platform as low-load and there is evidence to substantiate this claim. Offerings on Energia do not charge promotes or a carried interest, as is common in many other alternative investments. 

Offerings on Energia currently charge a flat AUM fee similar to many actively-managed ETFs. 

Ultimate fee structures can vary and are specific to the investor.

Energia offers an exceptional approach to energy investing that streamlines accessibility to accredited investors and eliminates the hassles of traditional energy investing. The platform backs this offering up with excellent educational resources that provide powerful insights into global energy investment and market trends, enabling investors to stay ahead of the market fundamentals. The platform offers responsive customer and robust security measures to secure investors' data and funds. These features make for a great user experience. 

When you get started, you can:

• See your whole portfolio on the dashboard
• Review the details of every investment you’ve made
• Check out new investments

However, the platform's lack of transparency regarding pricing and the signup process can be a turn-off for investors. To sign up or open an account, you'll first visit the Sign Up page, review and confirm your accredited investor status.

When transacting, you will need to answer a few questions so the platform can generate investing forms on your behalf. Energia has partnered with well-known third-parties like Plaid, Orum & DocuSign to make the investing process as simple and as easy as possible for investors. 

You will learn quickly if you need to submit extra accreditation documents, and you can get the whole process done in 5 to 10 minutes. 

While this may signify that Energia prioritizes quality energy investment services that deliver optimum returns for a limited number of high-net-worth investors, it can also be a turn-off for those without the patience to wait.

Energia vs. Competitors

Energia's novel energy investment approach transcends what is currently available in the energy investment landscape. Most private-market investments in the energy space are only available to private equity investors or large asset managers. There are few independent platforms that offer asset-level investment offerings straight to direct investors. This highlights the importance of the Energia platform and what it is bringing into the energy investment market.

Energia stands out as a novel energy fintech platform that simplifies the complexities of traditional energy investing, enabling investors to make smarter allocations to the energy sector within their portfolio. Its educational resources are impressive, and the customer support team is efficient. 

However, when considering investing through the platform, you must remember that it only accepts accredited investors. This limited investor intake can signify a priority for superior investment services that target more sophisticated investors. High-net worth individuals, wealth advisors and family offices are the people who can benefit most from Energia.

Frequently Asked Questions