Nigerian electric-mobility company MAX, formally known as Metro Africa Xpress, has extended its Series B3 funding round to $29 million following an undisclosed financing commitment from Nithio, a US-based climate fintech that provides risk-reduction tools and capital to accelerate clean-energy adoption in emerging markets. The extension follows a $24 million equity-and-debt round completed in January 2026 and brings MAX’s cumulative fleet financing above $56 million, as the company continues its expansion across Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon.
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What MAX has built
Founded in Lagos in 2015, MAX has constructed one of Africa’s most vertically integrated electric mobility platforms for commercial drivers. The system combines electric vehicle and battery partnerships, solar-powered battery swap infrastructure, IoT-enabled fleet management tools, digital payments, and financing in a single ecosystem designed specifically for the hundreds of thousands of commercial motorcycle and three-wheeler operators across West Africa.
The company calls its registered drivers “Champions” and has enrolled more than 60,000 across its active markets. It operates in 20 cities across Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon, with the Nigerian operation, its largest and most mature market, achieving profitability in 2026 following the deployment of more than $56 million in fleet financing to date. Drivers on the platform have collectively completed over one billion trips, a scale of activity that validates both the commercial model and the underlying demand for affordable, reliable commercial transport.
A two-wheeler EV platform that achieved profitability in Nigeria’s operating environment, 20 cities across three countries, and one billion trips is not a startup proving a concept. It is a business that has already proven the concept and is now in the phase of scaling what works.
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Why Nithio’s involvement matters
Nithio’s specific focus is on using data-driven risk assessment tools to make clean-energy investments more attractive to institutional capital in markets that have historically been considered too risky or opaque for large-scale deployment. Its involvement in MAX’s round is less about the capital it brings and more about the signal that risk assessment of the MAX portfolio has been conducted at a level that satisfies a sophisticated climate finance institution.
For MAX’s growth trajectory, the Nithio financing extends its runway and its ability to deploy more fleet capital to new Champions, expand into additional cities, and deepen the battery swap infrastructure that enables drivers to switch from fossil fuels to electric power without the range anxiety or charging downtime that has limited EV adoption in markets with unreliable grid electricity.
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The SME dimension
The commercial drivers on the MAX platform are micro-entrepreneurs. Their motorcycles and three-wheelers are their productive assets, and the economics of whether they can operate profitably, pay their families’ expenses, and build modest savings are shaped directly by the cost of fuel and the reliability of their vehicles.
MAX’s model replaces a large, unpredictable fuel cost with a structured, predictable battery swap subscription, and it replaces the maintenance uncertainty of ageing combustion-engine vehicles with a managed fleet programme. For the individual driver, the shift is from a cost structure that fluctuates with global oil markets to one that is stable, lower, and tied to a support system designed to keep the vehicle operational.
60,000 commercial drivers on an EV platform is 60,000 micro-enterprises that are paying less for energy, maintaining more predictable operating costs, and working with an institution that has a financial interest in their continued success. That is what productive, commercially structured access to clean energy looks like at the ground level.
