When Octopus Energy debuted in 2015, it did more than simply join the energy industry—it questioned its presumptions. The notion was incredibly simple yet extraordinarily innovative: mix clean energy with agile software and treat customers like users, not accounts.
With more than 12.9 million clients, the firm overtook British Gas as the biggest home supplier in the UK by 2025. But increase alone didn’t tell the full story. What made Octopus distinct was how it grew—rapidly, yes, but with a type of purposeful curiosity normally reserved for digital companies, not utility firms.
Greg Jackson, Octopus’s founder, regularly talks about empathy as an engineering philosophy. That might sound abstract, but in practice, it’s what motivated the development of Kraken—the company’s proprietary infrastructure that today underlies energy accounts across various continents. Its structure is incredibly straightforward, enabling scalability to both energy sellers and telecom carriers equally.
Kraken’s reach has become astonishingly effective. EDF, E.ON, Origin Energy, and Tokyo Gas all now use it. Even broadband companies like TalkTalk have used it to modernize their consumer interactions. It’s a technology intended not only to handle complexity, but to tame it—smoothing billing spikes, enabling dynamic pricing, and integrating renewable power with almost poetic accuracy.
| Company Name | Octopus Energy |
|---|---|
| Founded | August 5, 2015 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| CEO | Greg Jackson |
| Employees | 11,000 (2025) |
| Customers | 10 million (2024) |
| Services | Electricity, Gas, EV Charging, Heat Pumps |
| Notable Ventures | Kraken Software, Bitong Energy (China JV) |
| Reference Link | https://octopus.energy |
Octopus didn’t stop at software. It leaned hard into electrification—installing EV chargers, distributing heat pumps, and helping customers migrate to solar and battery solutions. Through projects like the Electroverse, customers may tap into over a million EV chargers globally with a single app. That kind of convenience isn’t simply efficient; it’s profoundly empowering.
Over the past few years, Octopus’s Fan Club program garnered headlines by offering discounted electricity to families near its wind farms. When the turbines spin faster, prices fall—making sustainable energy something people can see, hear, and even feel. It’s a tangible metaphor for transparency.
Its entrance into China, via the Bitong Energy joint venture, has opened even greater doors. The company intends to trade up to 140 terawatt-hours of green electricity per year throughout the region by 2030, which is notably comparable to the UK’s total usage. For a corporation not even a decade old at the time, the ambition was remarkably audacious.
Octopus’s cooperation strategy has been extremely beneficial. By cooperating with global hardware manufacturers like LG, the business introduced high-performance heat pumps into UK households. At the same time, it spent in training 1,000 new engineers annually—treating talent development as infrastructure.
While its efforts have not gone without criticism, especially concerning financial sustainability after incurring a £250 million loss in 2025, the leadership remains clear-eyed. They argue—convincingly—that constructing a clean energy future demands upfront risk. And their retention rates and customer evaluations suggest many agree.
For me, the first moment I thought Octopus had transcended the label of ‘utility company’ was when I learned about its “Zero Bills” homes—developments planned from the ground up to eliminate energy costs for a decade. The program was particularly impactful because it inverted the script: instead of treating green upgrades as an expense, it framed them as emancipation.
Octopus Energy is not flawless. But it is incredibly durable in its goal and highly efficient in how it executes that vision across software, infrastructure, and customer service. In a sector known for lethargy, it has been restlessly imaginative.
In the midst of rising energy concerns, Octopus stands not just as a supplier, but as a systems designer—streamlining how we generate, deliver, and engage with power. Whether it’s through heat pumps in Devon, software updates in Tokyo, or solar incentives in Germany, the tentacles are spreading.
And that’s not just branding.
That’s strategy, wrapped in code, delivered with care.
