Forest Road Company, the owners of the CUPRA KIRO Formula E team, has launched a new dedicated alternative energy investment platform called CenterNode to finance U.S. renewable energy development at scale.
The initiative will see up to $750 Million in capital commitments from Institutional Investors, including Liberty Mutual Investments, which will ‘support the scaling of CenterNode’s platform as it addresses the widening gap in the U.S. solar and infrastructure market’ according to official press material related to the deal.
Forest Road, a U.S-based investment firm, acquired the former ERT Formula E team in the autumn of 2024, turning it into the CUPRA KIRO entity that won its first ever race in Jakarta last June with Dan Ticktum.
How can CenterNode impact Formula E?
At first glance, the link between the launch and future activities of CenterNode and Formula E is indirect but could represent a potential test case as to how investment can intersect with Formula E’s broader ecosystem.
A direct line between the Forest Road-born CenterNode entity and Formula E may see capital being deployed into energy transition and CUPRA KIRO, an electric racing team positioned as the cultural front-end of new trends and shifts.
While most teams talk about sustainability – with some more active than others in actual deployment of the practice – the CenterNode plans could see capital actually moving at pace.
Could this, in fact, actually be less about CUPRA KIRO and more what it says about Formula E’s role, which, while strong in sustainability and its recent coup of becoming the world’s first B Corp certified sport, needs to move itself into a position of becoming more of a marketing platform for EVs, as well as building a wider ecosystem that includes infrastructure, finance, and energy transition.
What CenterNode can introduce, if it develops as intended, is a noticeably different profile of involvement within the paddock, with institutional capital – not venture or brand-led spend – implying long-term deployment across market cycles, not short-term activations tied to results or visibility.
Perhaps even more importantly, Forest Road’s CenterNode aligns directly with the core premise on which Formula E was founded, energy transition.
In that sense, it could represent a rare example of something that resembles vertical integration within motorsport, with capital flowing into infrastructure which, in turn would flow into sport.
If that shift were to materialise, it could reframe the conversation. Who is actually funding the energy transition behind Formula E? Why is infrastructure capital now entering the paddock? And is this what Gen4 really represents: a shift from marketing to markets?
Forest Road and CenterNode alone can’t answer these questions, but the very arrival sharpens them, and it asks whether Formula E is becoming something more structurally important than it’s currently been given credit for.
Is Formula E moving beyond its identity as a platform that promotes change by instead becoming a platform that is closer to the capital and the systems driving it? It will be intriguing to see how this new initiative interacts in and around space that thrives on high achievement and dextrous technical and strategic excellence.
Formula E’s mission to ‘Make Progress Thrilling’, provoking a sports industry that has spotlighted spectacle over systemic impact was backed up by its achievement of B Corp status in January.
Setting that ‘new global standard for what modern sport can be’ feels like a very relevant pathway for further stories in addition to CenterNode to be told as Formula E continues to mature in to Gen4 and beyond.
