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Energy startup Base Power raises $1 billion series C round

fresh funding

Base Power, founded by Justin Lopas and Zach Dell, has closed one of the largest venture capital deals of the year. Photo courtesy Base Power.

Austin-based startup Base Power, which offers battery-supported energy in the Houston area and other regions, has raised $1 billion in series C funding—making it one of the largest venture capital deals this year in the U.S.

VC firm Addition led the $1 billion round. All of Base Power’s existing major investors also participated, including Trust Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Altimeter, StepStone Group, 137 Ventures, Terrain, Waybury Capital, and entrepreneur Elad Gil. New investors include Ribbit Capital, Google-backed CapitalG, Spark Capital, Bond, Lowercarbon Capital, Avenir Growth Capital, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Positive Sum and 1789 Capital Management.

Coupled with the new $1 billion round, Base Power has hauled in more than $1.27 billion in funding since it was founded in 2023.

Base Power supplies power to homeowners and the electric grid through a distributed storage network.

“The chance to reinvent our power system comes once in a generation,” Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO of Base Power, said in a news release. “The challenge ahead requires the best engineers and operators to solve it, and we’re scaling the team to make our abundant energy future a reality.”

Zach Dell is the son of Austin billionaire and Houston native Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Round Rock-based Dell Technologies.

In less than two years, Base Power has developed more than 100 megawatt-hours of battery-enabled storage capacity. One megawatt-hour represents one hour of energy use at a rate of one million watts.

Base Power recently expanded its service to the city of Houston. It already was delivering energy to several other communities in the Houston area. To serve the Houston region, the startup has opened an office in Katy.

The startup also serves the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin markets. At some point, Base Power plans to launch a nationwide expansion.

To meet current and future demand, Base Power is building its first energy storage and power electronics factory at the former downtown Austin site of the Austin American-Statesman’s printing presses.

“We’re building domestic manufacturing capacity for fixing the grid,” Justin Lopas, co-founder and chief operating officer of Base Power, added in the release. “The only way to add capacity to the grid is [by] physically deploying hardware, and we need to make that here in the U.S. ... This factory in Austin is our first, and we’re already planning for our second.”

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Vaulted Deep, which diverts sludgy organic waste from landfills or waterways and captures and stores carbon emissions generated, is getting off the ground with $8 million from investors. Photo via Getty Images

Houston company's sustainable spinoff launches with $8M in seed funding

vaulted with capital

Houston-based Advantek Waste Management Services, which specializes in deep-injection wells that minimize the impact of land, air, and water waste, has launched a carbon removal and storage company.

The spinoff, Vaulted Deep, is getting off the ground with $8 million in seed funding.

Vaulted diverts sludgy organic waste, such as agricultural and livestock waste, before it’s dumped in a landfill or waterway or simply left on land to decompose. It then captures and stores carbon emissions generated by the organic waste.

A study published earlier this year by Louisiana State University ecologist Brian Snyder estimated that organic waste generates five gigatons of carbon dioxide per year. A gigaton equals one billion metric tons.

Vaulted is already off to an impressive start. For one thing, the startup has raised an $8 million seed round led by New York City-based carbon removal fund Lowercarbon Capital. Other investors include Advantek and San Francisco-based climatech VC fund Earthshot Ventures.

In addition, Vaulted has already nailed down purchase commitments from Frontier, a marketplace for buyers and sellers of carbon removal credits. Ryan Orbuch, a partner at Lowercarbon, is one of Frontier’s strategic advisers.

“Vaulted is literally cleaning up the planet, scaling field-proven injection terminology to safely dispose of harmful wastes like biosolids while permanently storing away millions of tons of CO2,” Orbuch says in a Vaulted news release.

While injection sequestration sites often take years to gain permits and start operating, Vaulted already boasts two permitted sites that are up and running. Vaulted offers carbon removal for $300 per ton, compared with more than $500 per ton charged by some competitors.

Advantek founder Omar Abou-Sayed is switching from CEO to chairman of Advantek, which launched in 1999, and will serve as executive chairman of Vaulted. Julia Reichelstein, a former investor at San Francisco-based climatech VC fund Piva Capital, has been tapped as CEO of Vaulted.

“Unlike many carbon removal technologies still in R&D, Vaulted’s technology and sites can safely and permanently store carbon underground, at scale, today,” says Abou-Sayed. “The early removals we will deliver are pivotal to keeping the window open to hold our planet’s warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

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Houston companies partner to advance industrial carbon capture tech

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Carbon Clean and Samsung E&A, both of which maintain their U.S. headquarters in Houston, have formed a partnership to accelerate the global use of industrial carbon capture systems.

Carbon Clean provides industrial carbon capture technology. Samsung E&A offers engineering, construction and procurement services. The companies say their partnership will speed up industrial decarbonization and make carbon capture more accessible for sectors that face challenges in decarbonizing their operations.

Carbon Clean says its fully modular columnless carbon capture unit, known as CycloneCC, is up to 50 percent smaller than traditional units and each "train" can capture up to 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

“Our partnership with Samsung E&A marks a major milestone in scaling industrial carbon capture,” Aniruddha Sharma, chair and CEO of Carbon Clean, said in a news release.

Hong Namkoong, CEO of Samsung E&A, added that the partnership with Carbon Clean will accelerate the global rollout of carbon capture systems that “are efficient, reliable, and ready for the energy transition.”

Carbon Clean and Samsung E&A had previously worked together on carbon capture projects for Aramco, an oil and gas giant, and Modec, a supplier of floating production systems for offshore oil and gas facilities. Aramco’s Americas headquarters is also in Houston, as is Modec’s U.S. headquarters.

Major Houston energy companies join new Carbon Measures coalition

green team

Six companies with a large presence in the Houston area have joined a new coalition of companies pursuing a better way to track the carbon emissions of products they manufacture, purchase and finance.

Houston-area members of the Carbon Measures coalition are:

  • Spring-based ExxonMobil
  • Air Liquide, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston
  • Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston
  • Honeywell, whose Performance Materials and Technologies business is based in Houston.
  • BASF, whose global oilfield solutions business is based in Houston
  • Linde, whose Linde Engineering Americas business is based in Houston

Carbon Measures will create an accounting framework that eliminates double-counting of carbon pollution and attributes emissions to their sources, said Amy Brachio, the group’s CEO. The model is expected to take two years to develop, and between five and seven years to scale up, Bloomberg reported.

The coalition wants to create a system that will “unleash markets and competition,” unlock investments and speed up the pace of emissions reduction, said Brachio, former vice chair of sustainability at professional services firm EY.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said Darren Woods, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil. “The first step to reducing global emissions is to know where they’re coming from — and today, we don’t have an accurate system to do this.”

Other members of the coalition include BlackRock-owned Global Infrastructure Partners, Banco Satanader, EY and NextEra Energy.

“Transparent and consistent emissions accounting is not just a technical necessity — it’s a strategic imperative. It enables smarter decisions and accelerates real progress across industries and borders,” said Ken West, president and CEO of Honeywell Energy and Sustainability Solutions.

Wind and solar supplied over a third of ERCOT power, report shows

power report

Since 2023, wind and solar power have been the fastest-growing sources of electricity for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and increasingly are meeting stepped-up demand, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The report says utility-scale solar generated 50 percent more electricity for ERCOT in the first nine months this year compared with the same period in 2024. Meanwhile, electricity generated by wind power rose 4 percent in the first nine months of this year versus the same period in 2024.

Together, wind and solar supplied 36 percent of ERCOT’s electricity in the first nine months of 2025.

Heavier reliance on wind and solar power comes amid greater demand for ERCOT electricity. In the first nine months of 2025, ERCOT recorded the fastest growth in electricity demand (5 percent) among U.S. power grids compared with the same period last year, according to the report.

“ERCOT’s electricity demand is forecast to grow faster than that of any other grid operator in the United States through at least 2026,” the report says.

EIA forecasts demand for ERCOT electricity will climb 14 percent in the first nine months of 2026 compared with the same period this year. This anticipated jump coincides with a number of large data centers and cryptocurrency mining facilities coming online next year.

The ERCOT grid covers about 90 percent of Texas’ electrical load.

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