The theme of Elemental Interactive 2026 was “Be Bold and Build.” Many stories celebrated success—but one stood apart for what happened when it didn’t.
At FreeWire’s peak, Arcady had momentum that many founders spend years chasing. The company had recently raised a $50 million Series C. In 2022, it brought in another $150 million and was scaling into tens of millions of dollars in revenue. 18 months later, it was filing for bankruptcy.
This conversation brought into focus the power of becoming antifragile—growing stronger under pressure, adapting through stress, and carrying hard-won lessons forward. It is also a telling story about what endures: relationships, purpose, and the courage to begin again.
We are grateful to Arcady for being vulnerable to share not just the highs, but also the lessons learned from the lows.
Naveen Sikka, founder and CEO of Terviva (an Elemental Portfolio Company from 2013) and Elemental board member, interviewed Arcady Sosinov, CEO of Tritium and former founder and CEO of FreeWire Technologies (a 2014 Elemental investment), during Interactive.
This conversation has been lightly edited from its original for length and clarity.
How did FreeWire begin and what did those early years look like?
The story of FreeWire is really the story of my entrepreneurial journey. It started in 2014, when I was in business school. FreeWire began as a class project. We wanted to deploy EV charging at scale without relying on grid upgrades.
The first iteration was a service where we provided mobile charging robots to corporate campuses around Silicon Valley. Imagine that moment: it was an outlandish idea, a very immature technology, a very small customer base, and a very niche market. And yet, we got a little bit of traction.
But even with that traction, it was hard. I realized I needed support in doing what I was doing. I was lucky enough to find Elemental, who didn’t say, “This is an outlandish idea.” They said, “Actually, this may not be so outlandish—and we might even have a customer who wants to try it.” That customer was Hawaiian Electric.
A year later, I had a network of builders, a little bit of capital from Elemental, and a pilot program in the ground with Hawaiian Electric that I could point to and say, “This is real.” More than that, I didn’t feel so alone anymore. That gave me the motivation to keep going.
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