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.”

From Your Site Articles

The company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Houston, reported closing the raise at €52 million, or around $55 million. Image via gridbeyond.com

Energy data platform with Houston HQ raises over $50M series C to scale US presence

going beyond

Dublin-based GridBeyond raised its series C to support its growth in the the United States.

The company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Houston, reported closing the raise at €52 million, or around $55 million. The round was led by Alantra’s Energy Transition Fund, Klima, with participation from new investors Energy Impact Partners, Mirova, ABB, Constellation and Yokogawa Electric Corporation as well as investment from existing investor, Act Venture Capital.

Founded in 2010, GridBeyond's AI platform allows businesses to unlock the full potential of energy assets and prioritize sustainability, resilience, and affordability of energy.

"This funding, together with the support of our new partners, will enable us to expand our product offering and strengthen our leadership position in this space," Michael Phelan, co-founder and CEO of GridBeyond, says in a news release. “The newly completed financing round sets GridBeyond on the path to increase the reach of our intelligent energy platform and deliver world leading AI and powerful automation capabilities to smart grid and energy markets across the world."

Specifically, the company reportedly will use the funding to expand in the United States, as well as continuing its investment in research and development to facilitate the delivery of a global zero-carbon future.

GridBeyond opened its Houston office, which is located at 2101 CityWest Blvd, four years ago. Last year, the business acquired Denver, Colorado-founded Veritone Business Energy.

Syzygy Plasmonics has raised a series C round of funding. Photo courtesy of Syzygy

Houston company closes $76M series C round to fuel its mission of reducing carbon emissions

MONEY + MATTER

A Houston-based company that is electrifying chemical manufacturing has closed its largest round of funding to date.

Syzygy Plasmonics closed a $76 million series C financing round led by New York-based Carbon Direct Capital. The round included participation from Aramco Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, LOTTE CHEMICAL, and Toyota Ventures. The company's existing investors joining the round included EVOK Innovations, The Engine, Equinor Ventures, Goose Capital, Horizons Ventures, Pan American Energy, and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas. According to a news release, Carbon Direct Capital will join Syzygy's board and serve as the series C director.

"We were very attracted to the multiple use cases for the Syzygy reactor and the lifetime-value of each Syzygy customer," says Jonathan Goldberg, Carbon Direct Capital's CEO, in the release. "Emissions from hydrogen production total more than 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Syzygy's photocatalysis technology is a key solution to decarbonize hydrogen production as well as other critical industries."

Syzygy Plasmonics has a technology that harnesses the power of light to energize chemical reactions — rather than the traditional process that is fueled by heat. The Syzygy approach reduces feedstock waste and produces fewer emissions when powered by renewable electricity. According to the release, some series C participants have also formed commercial agreements to deploy Syzygy's technology to meet their decarbonization goals.

The investment funding raised will help the company to "further development and delivery of all-electric reactor systems that eliminate fossil-based combustion from chemical manufacturing and reduce the carbon intensity of hydrogen, methanol, and fuel," per the release.

"Our mission is to decarbonize chemical and fuel production," says Syzygy Plasmonics CEO and Co-Founder Trevor Best in the release. "Syzygy's aim is to achieve 1 gigaton of carbon emissions reductions by 2040, and the series C financing is a key milestone in building towards that goal.

"Closing this fundraising round with such strong support from financial and strategic investors and with commercial agreements in hand is a signal to the market," he continues. "Forward-thinking companies have moved beyond setting decarbonization goals to executing on them. Syzygy is unique in that we are developing low-cost, low-carbon solutions to offer across multiple industries."

Syzygy was founded based off a breakthrough discover out of Rice University from co-founders and professors Naomi Halas and Peter Nordlander, who invented high-performance photocatalysts. The company's collaborators then engineered a novel reactor that uses easy-to-find low-cost materials like glass, aluminum, and LEDs instead of high-cost metal alloys. After several field trials of the scalable, universal chemical reactor platform, Syzygy expects commercial units scheduled to ship in 2023.

"Syzygy is hyper-focused on aligning energy, technology, and sustainability," says Suman Khatiwada, CTO and co-founder of Syzygy, in the release. "The projects we are delivering are targeting zero-emissions hydrogen from green ammonia, low-emissions hydrogen from combustion-free steam methane reforming, and sustainable fuels made from carbon dioxide and methane. This technology is the future of chemical manufacturing."

Syzygy has raised a $23 million series B round last year following its $5.8 series A in 2019.

------

This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

Ad Placement 300x100

Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Chevron eyes $7B Texas power plant for Microsoft data center campus

power deal

Software giant Microsoft is negotiating exclusively with Houston-based oil and gas titan Chevron and investment firm Engine No. 1 about the development of a $7 billion power plant in West Texas that would supply electricity for a Microsoft data center campus.

The proposed natural-gas-fired plant initially would generate 2,500 megawatts of electricity, Bloomberg reports. The plant would be built near Pecos, a Permian Basin city, in an area where Microsoft plans to build a 2,500-megawatt data center campus on a 7,000-acre site.

A deal with Microsoft would secure a long-term customer for the plant’s output and help finance its construction, Bloomberg says. The project, expected to be producing power by 2030, still requires tax and environmental approvals as well an agreement to terms among Chevron, Engine No. 1, and Microsoft.

In a statement issued after Bloomberg reported the news, Chevron acknowledged it was in exclusive talks with Engine No. 1 and Microsoft, but the oil and gas company offered no details.

Chevron says the proposed plant “reflects an emerging shift in how power for AI is being developed, bringing energy supply closer to demand through co-located, behind-the-meter generation to deliver reliability while helping avoid added strain on regional electricity systems. It pairs sustained, always-on demand from advanced computing with proven capability to design, build, and operate large-scale energy infrastructure.”

Development of gas-powered electrical plants for AI data centers represents a new—and potentially lucrative— business line for Chevron. In 2025, Chevron, Engine No. 1 and GE Vernova announced a partnership to produce natural gas for AI data centers in the U.S.

Chevron’s collaboration with Engine No. 1 has already secured an order for seven large natural gas turbines from GE Vernova, according to Bloomberg.

“Energy is the key to America’s AI dominance,” Chris James, founder and chief investment officer of Engine No. 1, said last year. “By using abundant domestic natural gas to generate electricity directly connected to data centers, we can secure AI leadership, drive productivity gains across our economy, and restore America’s standing as an industrial superpower.”

8 CERAWeek 2026 takeaways from a new Houston energy leader

guest column

My first CERAWeek was a blur.

Having top energy executives, policymakers, and technologists all gathered in Houston—over 11,000 of them this year—was both overwhelming and energizing. The theme was “Convergence and Competition: Energy, Technology, and Geopolitics,” and walking through the George R. Brown Convention Center, it was immediately clear that this was no ordinary industry conference.

As a first-timer with a Greentown Labs lens, here’s what really stuck with me.

Disruption is the new normal

CERAWeek 2026 was set against the backdrop of conflict in the Middle East, the continued race to power AI, and a clear throughline: disruption is increasingly the new normal. You could feel it in every hallway conversation. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East, specifically Iran’s attacks on Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, affected roughly 20% of the world’s liquified natural gas supply, and that was woven into nearly every conversation throughout the week.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright opened the conference with “Energy is life,” then quickly turned to natural gas. “America’s superpower is natural gas,” he said, pointing to its role in industry, heat, electricity, fertilizer, exports, and leading AI and manufacturing. That set the tone early and it never really shifted.

AI is still everywhere, but the conversation has shifted

No surprise that AI dominated the agenda. But what struck me as a first-timer was how much the conversation had matured. The AI discussion has moved from general enthusiasm to a much more practical focus on real use cases and measurable outcomes.

NVIDIA, Anthropic, and CyrusOne joined the established tech presences of Microsoft, Google, and AWS, occupying the Innovation Agora’s new AI Hub, which displaced the hydrogen hub from prior years. That detail alone tells you something about where the energy conversation has shifted. Annual global investment in data centers reached $771 billion in 2025, nearly on par with oil and gas ($835 billion) and renewable energy ($798 billion). We are not talking about a niche technology story anymore. This is a capital story, an infrastructure story, and an energy story all at once.

The prevailing tone was uncertain; the gap between what is being announced and what can actually be delivered was the subtext of almost every conversation. Transmission takes over a decade to build. The new generation takes five to nine years. AI infrastructure moves on three-to-five-year timelines. The math doesn’t work yet, and everyone is aware.

Pitch competitions still draw crowds

The Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition at the McKinney Balcony was one of my favorite events of the week. Seeing Greentown members on that stage never gets old, but what really energized me was the broader mix: students, new founders, and veteran entrepreneurs in one space, all talking about how what they’re building is going to impact the world. S&P Global launched the NextGen cohort with 100+ graduate students from around the country getting a front-row seat to the energy sector.

Geothermal may have stolen the show

If I had to pick the most surprising theme of my first CERAWeek, it was geothermal. It drew the most consistent endorsement of the week, with Department of Energy representatives, oil and gas majors, and operators broadly aligned on its potential. Project InnerSpace hosted a dedicated Geothermal House for the first time, launching a standardized resource classification framework with the Society of Petroleum Engineers and an XPRIZE collaboration targeting surface-plant supply chain breakthroughs. For a sector that has lived in the shadows of wind and solar for years, CERAWeek 2026 was geothermal’s time to shine.

Wow, was I impressed with Melanie Nakagawa

Melanie Nakagawa, chief sustainability officer at Microsoft, delivered an impressive keynote during her fireside chat with Brad Burke. Her depth of experience, from the U.S. Department of State and venture capital to her current role at Microsoft, was matched only by her calm, hopeful demeanor. Leaders like her at the helm of climate action inspire genuine confidence in the future.

What about hydrogen?

Hydrogen was notably absent from the main stage. The AI Hub in the Innovation Agora displaced the hydrogen hub that had been a fixture in prior years. Seems like hydrogen still plays a role, but not as quickly or broadly as hoped. Blue hydrogen is moving forward cautiously. It wasn’t gone from the conversation entirely, but it no longer commands the room.

The label problem isn’t going away

Politics continues to polarize the industry. Climatetech, sustainability, cleantech — some labels carry broad objectives, others have become tribal signals. “Energy transition” for some means a replacement of fossil fuels; for others, it means an evolution across multiple dimensions simultaneously. CERAWeek 2026 showed an industry increasingly focused not on feel-good narratives about the future of energy, but on the harder questions of security, buildout, reliability, affordability, and competitiveness. A pragmatic shift may be the best answer to the label problem.

Collaboration isn’t optional—it’s strategic

The energy transition is no longer primarily an environmental story. It has become a technology and national competitiveness story. The problems are too big for any one company, sector, or country to solve alone. From incubators and investors to utilities and hyperscalers, the message was consistent all week: move together or we don’t move. S&P Global introduced “The Bridge,” a new venue specifically for energy-tech crossover conversations: a small but meaningful signal that even the conference organizers recognize that collaboration will get us further.

The scale and the energy in the room (pun intended) are what stood out most from my first CERAWeek. The industry knows what needs to get built. The question now is whether we can work together to build it fast enough.

See you next year, CERAWeek.

---
Kelsey Kearns is director of Greentown Houston with more than a decade of experience in the technology sector. She served as director of community strategy for Greentown Houston from September 2025 to February 2026. Before that, she was director of business development for Howdy.com.

Houston nuclear startup launches at CERAWeek, plans Texas facility

going nuclear

A new nuclear energy startup launched last month during CERAWeek in the Bayou City.

FluxPoint Energy, the new Houston- and McLean, Virginia-based company, plans to develop the nation’s first new uranium conversion facility in more than 70 years, an effort CEO and founder Mike Chilton says is critical to unlocking the next phase of nuclear energy growth.

"Policymakers, utilities, and developers increasingly point to fuel availability as a limiting factor for America's nuclear reactors—both present and future," Chilton said in a news release. "Uranium conversion has become an unacceptable chokepoint in a global supply chain still dominated by foreign providers."

Chilton has held leadership roles at Pegasus-Global Holdings and GE Verona Hitachi Global Nuclear Fuels. Rodrigo Gonzalez Arbizu serves as COO and Christopher J. Rimel as chief of staff. The Board of Advisors includes energy leaders, including Jeff Lyash, John Sharp, Jane Stricker, Jennifer Skylakos, Leo Weitzenhoff and Jay Wileman.

FluxPoint’s planned facility will convert uranium oxide into uranium hexafluoride (UF6). Although FluxPoit’s new facility is still far off, the company announced it had secured a site and completed both market and feasibility studies. The specific area has not been revealed, only that it will be in Texas.

Discussions at CERAWeek revolved around securing reliable sources of uranium.

Nuclear energy production has been stagnant or even in slight decline since the 1990s. Concerns about nuclear waste and safety, as well as prohibitive costs, have kept new plants from being built, while the widespread availability of cheap natural gas has made investing in nuclear power less profitable. Many see the technology as dangerous and outdated.

However, as energy crises become more common, companies like FluxPoint are looking to restart the nuclear energy sector. The industry got a boost under the Biden Administration thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which set goals of adding 35 gigawatts of new capacity by 2035.

Chilton participated in a panel on the best ways to ensure American nuclear plants have access to uranium, most of which is not mined in the United States.

"America cannot lead in nuclear energy while relying on foreign-controlled fuel processing," Chilton added. "FluxPoint was created to restore a critical piece of our nation's energy infrastructure—ensuring that U.S. reactors have access to a secure, domestic fuel supply. This is about energy security, economic strength, and global leadership."

View All Listings

ENERGYCAPITALHTX EMAILS ARE AWESOME