From Leith Walk to Global Markets: The Edinburgh Entrepreneur Rewriting the Rules on Green Tech

Catriona Drummond launched Voltpath Energy out of a shared desk at CodeBase on Argyle House in 2022 with £40,000 in savings and a pitch deck she'd revised seventeen times. By the end of June 2026, the company had secured a £6.2 million Series A round led by Edinburgh-based Equity Gap, with co-investment from the Scottish National Investment Bank. It now employs 34 people across offices on Leith Walk and a small manufacturing unit in Granton. Drummond is 31.

The timing matters. Scotland's enterprise agencies are under pressure to show that public investment in deep-tech startups produces jobs that stick around. Scottish Enterprise's latest figures put the number of high-growth businesses in Edinburgh at 412 — up 8 percent on 2024 — but critics argue too many of those companies remain subscale, dependent on grant funding, and unlikely to reach export markets. Voltpath is being watched closely precisely because it appears to be doing the opposite.

The company's core product is a grid-edge battery management system designed for commercial property developers. It integrates with existing building management software and, according to a technical validation report published by Heriot-Watt University's Energy Academy in March 2026, reduces peak-load energy costs by between 22 and 31 percent across a range of building types. That figure has attracted serious interest from developers in Germany and the Nordics — markets now accelerating their own grid-resilience spending in response to supply disruptions that have hit household energy prices hard across Europe this year.

A City That Builds Companies — and Sometimes Keeps Them

Edinburgh's commercial property market offers a mixed backdrop. Average Grade A office rents in the city centre hit £42.50 per square foot in Q1 2026, according to CBRE Scotland's spring market report — a modest 3 percent rise year-on-year but well below the double-digit growth seen between 2021 and 2023. Vacancy rates on George Street and around St Andrew Square have crept up to around 9 percent as some financial services tenants consolidate space. Landlords are offering longer rent-free periods to attract occupiers, sometimes up to 18 months on a 10-year lease.

That softening has created an opening for fast-growing tech firms willing to take on slightly larger footprints than they strictly need today. Voltpath signed a five-year lease on 4,500 square feet of refurbished space on Leith Walk in January, paying below the city-centre benchmark at £28 per square foot. The Leith corridor has become a genuine secondary cluster for tech and creative businesses priced out of the New Town and Old Town, with the City of Edinburgh Council's Leith Enterprise Hub — opened on Duke Street in September 2024 — now hosting 19 resident companies.

Drummond's approach to hiring has drawn attention from Napier University's business school, which is tracking Voltpath as a case study in its 2026 graduate retention programme. The company has taken on eight graduates from Edinburgh's universities in the past 12 months, offering starting salaries of £32,000 — above the Scottish tech-sector median of £29,500 cited in the Fraser of Allander Institute's June 2026 labour market review. Two joined from Heriot-Watt's electrical engineering programme; three came through the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering.

What Comes Next — and What Edinburgh Needs to Watch

The Series A funding gives Voltpath an 18-month runway to reach a target of £4 million in annual recurring revenue before a planned Series B raise in early 2028. The company has already signed a pilot agreement with a Copenhagen-based property developer covering 12 commercial buildings, with a formal rollout decision expected by October 2026.

For Edinburgh's wider business community, the Voltpath story carries a practical lesson: the city's ability to retain founders through the difficult middle years — not just incubate them in the early stage — depends on affordable commercial space, accessible follow-on capital, and universities that treat industry partnerships as genuine priorities rather than marketing exercises. The Scottish National Investment Bank's patient-capital model, which took a minority equity stake without demanding near-term profitability, appears to have given Drummond the breathing room that earlier-stage founders here routinely say they lack.

Applications for the next cohort of Scottish Enterprise's High Growth Accelerator — which Voltpath graduated from in 2024 — open on 14 July. The programme offers up to £50,000 in non-dilutive funding alongside mentoring and export-readiness support. For Edinburgh entrepreneurs watching Drummond's trajectory, that deadline is worth marking in the diary.