Sun King

Sun King has been able to deliver off-grid solar electricity to 50 million people, mostly in Africa, by financing it creatively—and in the process becoming the world’s largest off-grid solar company. Founded in 2007 by T. Patrick Walsh and Anish Thakkar, Sun King charges no up-front cost for installing solar systems for families that have limited or no access to the grid and may rely on gasoline generators and kerosene lamps. The company reports that around two-thirds of new customers are getting electricity for the first time. 

“Sometimes people are walking miles just to charge their phone,” says CEO Walsh. Customers pay as little as 15¢ a day for lighting, TV, fans, refrigeration, and phone charging, and can own the solar equipment in under two years. Sun King takes that recurring flow of tiny payments and securitizes it as bonds. “Climate- and impact-minded investors still need a return on capital when they provide a loan,” Thakkar says. “We're able to provide them this very predictable, safe return, packaging the receivables from hundreds of thousands of our clients.”  

Last summer the company closed a $156 million bond deal backed by Citigroup to bring solar to more than a million Kenyans, the first fully local currency securitization of any kind in sub-Saharan Africa. In total, the company has extended more than $1.5 billion in purchase financing to 10 million customers. “We’ve been able to attract not only best-in-class financing for solar, but really some of the most innovative financing in any industry,” Walsh says. In early 2026 it announced plans to invest $150 million in bringing solar power to Ethiopia by 2030. 

Sun King also employs 40,000 local field agents across Africa and Asia, who go door-to-door setting up systems in communities. And last year the company opened its first African manufacturing facility, in Kenya, creating jobs assembling solar systems, with plans for a facility in Nigeria in 2026.