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Texas energy startup closes $200M round to fund first factory in the state

fresh funding

Base Power, founded by Justin Lopas and Zach Dell, closed a $200 million series B and plans to expand in Texas and around the country. Photo courtesy Base Power.

Base Power, an Austin-based startup that provides battery-powered home energy services and just entered the Houston market, has raised $200 million in series B funding.

The money will help finance the construction of Base Power’s first factory in Texas. A site for the factory hasn’t been announced. The cash will also go toward the national expansion of Base Power’s services.

Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Valor Equity Partners co-led the round, with participation from existing investors such as Thrive Capital, Altimeter, Terrain, and Trust.

As part of the fundraising, Lee Fixel of Addition and Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity Partners are joining Base Power’s board of directors.

Last year, the startup landed $68 million in a series A funding round.

Base Power, founded in 2023, specializes in developing battery storage for energy that it provides to residential customers. Its partners include homebuilder Lennar and the Bandera Electric Cooperative, which supplies power to customers in seven Hill Country counties. Earlier this year it began serving the Houston-area territory serviced by CenterPoint Energy.

“Our rapid expansion has allowed us to power up thousands of Texans in just a few months, while driving their energy costs down and power reliability up,” Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO of Base Power, says in a news release. “With this investment, we will continue to innovate on new grid solutions, establish our domestic manufacturing capabilities, and accelerate adoption nationally.”

Dell’s father is Austin tech billionaire Michael Dell. He founded the company with Justin Lopas.

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Shreyans Chopra, founder of Mstack, is celebrating the close of his company's $40 million series A. Photo courtesy of Mstack

Innovative Houston chemicals manufacturing platform provider raises $40M series A

Money moves

Houston-based Mstack, whose platform helps manufacturers source specialty chemicals, has raised $40 million in a series A funding round.

Lightspeed Venture Partners and Alpha Wave Incubation led the round, which includes a debt facility from HSBC Innovation Banking and money from several angel investors.

In a news release, Mstack says the infusion of cash will enable it to “double down on its mission to disrupt a historically flawed supply chain for specialty chemicals.”

This “doubling down” will include expansion of Mstack’s footprint in the U.S., Middle East, Latin America, and Asia.

“Geopolitical dynamics pose risks for supply chain disruptions in the global specialty chemicals market,” Bejul Somaia, a partner at Lightspeed, says in a news release.

“With demand for these chemicals growing rapidly, there is a need to increase R&D investments and unlock new pockets of supply,” he adds. “As the first institutional investor in Mstack, we believe that the company has tremendous potential to lead this transformation.”

Mstack, founded in 2022, currently serves four business sectors: oil and gas, coatings, water treatment, and home and personal care. The funding will enable it to move into industry segments such as agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals.

The Mstack platform gives buyers a one-stop shop for sourcing, testing, shipping, delivering, and tracking specialty chemicals.

“This new funding affirms investor confidence in our vision and technology to transform global markets. It enables us to expand geographically and intensify our R&D efforts,” Mstack founder Shreyans Chopra says.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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Oxy subsidiary granted landmark EPA permits for carbon capture facility

making progress

Houston’s Occidental Petroleum Corp., or Oxy, and its subsidiary 1PointFive announced that the U.S Environmental Protection Agency approved its Class VI permits to sequester carbon dioxide captured from its STRATOS Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility near Odessa. These are the first such permits issued for a DAC project, according to a news release.

The $1.3 billion STRATOS project, which 1PointFive is developing through a joint venture with investment manager BlackRock, is designed to capture up to 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually and is expected to begin commercial operations this year. DAC technology pulls CO2 from the air at any location, not just where carbon dioxide is emitted. Major companies, such as Microsoft and AT&T, have secured carbon removal credit agreements through the project.

The permits are issued under the Safe Drinking Water Act's Underground Injection Control program. The captured CO2 will be stored in geologic formations more than a mile underground, meeting the EPA’s review standards.

“This is a significant milestone for the company as we are continuing to develop vital infrastructure that will help the United States achieve energy security,” Vicki Hollub, Oxy president and CEO, said in a news release.“The permits are a catalyst to unlock value from carbon dioxide and advance Direct Air Capture technology as a solution to help organizations address their emissions or produce vital resources and fuels.”

Additionally, Oxy and 1PointFive announced the signing of a 25-year offtake agreement for 2.3 million metric tons of CO2 per year from CF Industries’ upcoming Bluepoint low-carbon ammonia facility in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.

The captured CO2 will be transported to and stored at 1PointFive’s Pelican Sequestration Hub, which is currently under development. Eventually, 1PointFive’s Pelican hub in Louisiana will include infrastructure to safely and economically sequester industrial emissions in underground geologic formations, similar to the STRATOS project.

“CF Industries’ and its partners' confidence in our Pelican Sequestration Hub is a validation of our expertise managing carbon dioxide and how we collaborate with industrial organizations to become their commercial sequestration partner,” Jeff Alvarez, President of 1PointFive Sequestration, said in a news release.

1PointFive is storing up to 20 million tons of CO2 per year, according to the company.

“By working together, we can unlock the potential of American manufacturing and energy production, while advancing industries that deliver high-quality jobs and economic growth,” Alvarez said in a news release.

Houston energy-focused AI platform raises $5M in Mercury-led seed round

fresh funding

Houston-based Collide, a provider of generative artificial intelligence for the energy sector, has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Houston’s Mercury Fund.

Other investors in the seed round include Bryan Sheffield, founder of Austin-based Parsley Energy, which was acquired by Dallas-based Pioneer Natural Resources in 2021; Billy Quinn, founder and managing partner of Dallas-based private equity firm Pearl Energy Investments; and David Albin, co-founder and former managing partner of Dallas-based private equity firm NGP Capital Partners.

“(Collide) co-founders Collin McLelland and Chuck Yates bring a unique understanding of the oil and gas industry,” Blair Garrou, managing partner at Mercury, said in a news release. “Their backgrounds, combined with Collide’s proprietary knowledge base, create a significant and strategic moat for the platform.”

Collide, founded in 2022, says the funding will enable the company to accelerate the development of its GenAI platform. GenAI creates digital content such as images, videos, text, and music.

Originally launched by Houston media organization Digital Wildcatters as “a professional network and digital community for technical discussions and knowledge sharing,” the company says it will now shift its focus to rolling out its enterprise-level, AI-enabled solution.

Collide explains that its platform gathers and synthesizes data from trusted sources to deliver industry insights for oil and gas professionals. Unlike platforms such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, Collide’s platform “uniquely accesses a comprehensive, industry-specific knowledge base, including technical papers, internal processes, and a curated Q&A database tailored to energy professionals,” the company said.

Collide says its approximately 6,000 platform users span 122 countries.

CenterPoint reports progress on grid improvements ahead of 2025 hurricane season

grid resilience

As part of an ongoing process to make Houston better prepared for climate disasters, CenterPoint Energy announced its latest progress update on the second phase of the Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative (GHRI).

CenterPoint reported that it has completed 70 percent of its resiliency work and all GHRI-related actions are expected to be complete before the official start of the 2025 hurricane season.

"Our entire CenterPoint Houston Electric team is focused on completing this historic suite of grid resiliency actions before the start of hurricane season,” Darin Carroll, Senior Vice President of CenterPoint's Electric Business, said in a news release. “That is our goal, and we will achieve it. To date, we have made significant progress as part of this historic effort.”

CenterPoint’s resiliency solutions include clearing higher-risk vegetation across thousands of miles of power lines, adding thousands more automation devices capable of self-healing, installing thousands of storm-resistant poles, and undergrounding hundreds of miles of power lines.

CenterPoint's GHRI efforts, which entered a second phase in September 2024, aim to improve overall grid resiliency and reliability and are estimated to reduce outages for customers by more than 125 million minutes annually, according to the company. It has undergrounded nearly 350 miles of power lines, about 85 percent of the way toward its target of 400 miles, which will help improve resiliency and reduce the risk of outages. CenterPoint also aims to install the first of 100 new local weather monitoring stations by June 1.

In March, CenterPoint cleared 655 miles of high-risk vegetation near power lines, installed 1,215 automated reliability devices capable of self-healing, and added an additional 3,300 storm-resilient poles.

In April, CenterPoint will begin building a network of 100 new weather monitoring stations, which will provide 24/7 weather monitoring and storm response preparation.

“We will continue to work every day to complete these critical improvements as part of our company's goal of building the most resilient coastal grid in the country,” Carroll added in the release.

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