Ep. 28: Orlin Radev, CEO of Ampeco, on Scaling a Global CPMS, Smart Charging and the Future of EV Network

In this episode of Smart Charge by RiDERgy, we sit down with
Orlin Radev, CEO and founder of Ampeco, one of
the world’s fastest-scaling charge point management system (CPMS)
providers. Since raising a $26M Series B in 2024, Ampeco has
grown to 200,000 managed charge points across 60 markets, serving
utilities like E.ON and hundreds of CPOs worldwide.


Orlin shares his entrepreneurial journey from launching his first
company in high school to co-founding 10 ventures before Ampeco,
and how he went from being an industry outsider in Sofia to
building a global SaaS leader. We cover the unique strategy that
helped Ampeco scale without building its own charging network,
its API-first approach, and why alignment with customers—not
competition—is at the heart of its business model.


Key themes include:


Bootstrapping from Sofia to 180+ enterprise clients across
Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and North America

Outsider advantage: how naivety and persistence opened doors
in a crowded CPMS market

Selling to CPOs: the “killer arguments” that convinced
operators to switch platforms

Why orchestrating best-in-class vendors beats trying to build
everything in-house

Smart charging today: why V1G scheduling is underutilized,
and why V2G remains costly

Orlin’s long-term vision: from consolidation of CPO markets
to seamless plug-and-charge UX and the promise of wireless
charging



We also explore Ampeco’s perspective on emerging EV markets in
Brazil, Mexico, Ethiopia and beyond, where Chinese EV brands are
driving adoption and leapfrogging infrastructure buildouts. Orlin
reflects on the double-growth dynamics of an emerging industry,
the role of flexibility markets in Norway, and why CPOs are
drowning in complexity but don’t have to.


This is a wide-ranging conversation on scaling software,
navigating regulation, and what it takes to become the operating
system of EV charging worldwide.