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Base Power raises $1 billion at a $13 billion valuation to scale home batteries. Key points * Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners and JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group led the $1 billion Series D, which valued Base Power at $13 billion after the investment.[[1]] * Base says it has deployed more than 500 MWh of storage and is manufacturing its new 39.2-kWh Base Core system in Austin.[[1]] [[4]] * Named utility projects with CoServ, GVEC and Austin Energy total 190 MW, giving Base a route into regulated markets where households cannot choose a retail electricity provider.[[6]] [[7]] [[8]] * Independent research supports the potential for virtual power plants to reduce capacity costs, but customer enrollment and measurable performance remain significant barriers.[[10]] [[11]] * The company's expansion beyond Texas faces different market rules: Base is a licensed retail supplier in Illinois, while direct participation by distributed aggregations in PJM's energy and ancillary-service markets is not scheduled until 2028.[[5]] [[13]] Base Power has raised another $1 billion to expand its network of residential batteries, giving the three-year-old Austin startup a $13 billion post-money valuation as it pushes beyond Texas and increases in-house manufacturing.[[1]] The Wall Street Journal reported that the financing brought Base's total capital raised to more than $2.5 billion.[[2]] Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners and JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group led the Series D. Altimeter, D1 Capital Partners, Sands Capital, Coatue, Layer Global, Energy Impact Partners, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Trust Ventures and Alphabet's CapitalG also participated. Michael Dell, the father of Base co-founder and CEO Zach Dell, did not invest in the round, TechCrunch reported.[[1]] A higher valuation and an in-house manufacturing bet. The round follows Base's $1 billion Series C in October 2025, which valued the company at about $4 billion. The new financing therefore more than triples its post-money valuation in less than a year.[[3]] Base has not disclosed its revenue, profitability or how much of the Series D will be allocated among factories, battery ownership, installation operations and customer acquisition. Base also introduced Base Core, a 39.2-kWh home battery assembled at its factory in the former Austin American-Statesman printing facility. Customers can receive one or two units, providing 39.2 kWh or 78.4 kWh of nominal storage. Base advertises up to 36 hours of backup under reduced household consumption, though actual duration depends on the home's load and how much charge remains when an outage begins.[[1]] [[4]] The company says its deployed fleet has surpassed 500 MWh. TechCrunch, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported that Base was installing about 100 batteries per day and hoped to double that pace by the end of 2026.[[1]] The published figures do not clarify whether "batteries" refers to individual 39.2-kWh units or household systems that may contain two units, so the associated daily megawatt-hour deployment rate cannot be independently calculated. Base owns and maintains the equipment instead of selling it to homeowners. In competitive Texas electricity markets, an affiliate operates as the customer's retail provider and uses the batteries to shift purchases and sales across periods of low and high power prices. A current Oncor-area offer lists a $695 installation charge and a $19 monthly membership for one 39.2-kWh unit.[[4]] Base previously outlined plans for a second Austin manufacturing site measuring about 486,000 square feet, with a proposed $265 million investment and 500 new jobs.[[14]] The company and Austin later ended negotiations over a municipal incentive package. Construction at the proposed site nevertheless appeared to be moving forward in March, according to the Austin Business Journal, but Base has not published a revised budget, production target or opening date.[[15]] Two business models across Texas and Illinois. Base's original model is concentrated in parts of Texas where customers can choose their retail electricity supplier. It expanded to northern Illinois in 2026 through Base Retail, an affiliate licensed by the Illinois Commerce Commission as an alternative retail electric supplier in ComEd territory.[[5]] In both markets, the retail relationship gives Base a potential revenue stream from electricity supply in addition to the battery's backup and grid-balancing value. Discover more Cloud Storage Mathematics Company Earnings In regulated utility territories, Base uses a different structure. The household keeps its existing utility, while Base installs and maintains batteries under an agreement that allows the utility to dispatch some of their capacity. Base's public pricing directory lists programs with CoServ, Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative, Farmers Electric Cooperative, Austin Energy and El Paso Electric, alongside its retail offers in Texas and Illinois.[[4]] The largest publicly detailed project is a 100-MW agreement with CoServ, a North Texas electric cooperative, targeted for completion over two years. Reaching that capacity could require roughly 5,000 participating homes. The contract is structured so CoServ pays for capacity Base actually delivers, an important safeguard when a utility relies on thousands of individually installed devices.[[6]] Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative has agreed to a 50-MW deployment and aims to have 20 MW operating by the end of 2026.[[7]] Austin Energy has contracted for another 40 MW. At full output, Austin's fleet will have about 90 minutes of duration, though it can discharge at lower power for longer.[[8]] Austin authorized payments of up to $4.08 million per year for as long as 10 years, at a fixed capacity price. Base is responsible for recruiting households, installing and maintaining the batteries, and ensuring that the contracted portion is available to Austin Energy for dispatch.[[9]] The public CoServ and GVEC disclosures do not provide comparable contract prices, making it difficult to assess those projects' cost against utility-scale batteries or gas-fired peakers. Discover more Computer Science Market trend reports What independent research says about grid savings. Independent analysis supports the broad premise that coordinated household devices can provide lower-cost peak capacity. The Brattle Group modeled a 400-MW virtual power plant and estimated its net utility cost at roughly 40% to 60% of the cost of a gas peaker or transmission-connected battery offering comparable resource adequacy. It estimated that 60 GW of U.S. virtual power plants could avoid $15 billion to $35 billion in capacity investment over a decade.[[10]] The study was commissioned by Google, an investor in Base through CapitalG, and did not evaluate Base's hardware or contracts. Research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory adds an important operational caveat. Its work on demand-response potential found a wide gap between the economic potential of residential flexibility and what programs can achieve under ordinary conditions, with low enrollment rates a particular constraint for household programs.[[11]] Base must therefore prove not only that its batteries work, but that it can recruit enough eligible homes in each utility territory to assemble useful capacity. Residential batteries also address only some reliability risks. They can lower peak demand, provide short-duration capacity and keep an equipped home powered when the wider grid fails. They do not necessarily prevent outages caused by damaged local wires, poles or transformers. Berkeley Lab simulations of behind-the-meter battery adoption in Indiana found limited effects on overall grid outage metrics, underscoring the distinction between customer backup and systemwide reliability.[[12]] Regulatory access is another constraint. Federal rules require regional grid operators to create pathways for distributed-resource aggregations, but implementation remains uneven. PJM, which covers northern Illinois and much of the Mid-Atlantic, is not scheduled to open its energy and ancillary-service markets to these aggregations until February 2028.[[13]] Base can operate as an Illinois retail supplier today, but it has not publicly detailed how much revenue it expects from retail supply, peak management or eventual wholesale-market participation. The financing gives Base the capital to manufacture and install far more hardware. Its utility contracts will provide a clearer test than the funding round: whether the company can recruit households, meet dispatch instructions and deliver measured capacity often enough to justify the cost utilities and investors are taking on. Companies mentioned. At the intersection of AI, tech, and markets. The stories that matter, in one email. Free - unsubscribe anytime.

Base Power raises another $1B to save the grid using backyard batteries. Base Power's $1 billion round will help the startup ramp production of its home batteries. Where most energy storage companies look for big tracts of land near large connections to the grid, Base Power is betting that it can beat them all by putting batteries in people's backyards instead. It appears to be paying off, with Base Power installing more than 500 megawatt-hours of storage over the past few years. The startup announced today that it has raised another $1 billion less than a year after its last billion-dollar round. The Series D values the company at a $13 billion post-money valuation. Base Power is installing about 100 batteries per day, according to The Wall Street Journal report, and it hopes to double that by the end of the year. That works out to about 8 megawatt-hours of storage installed per day. Base Power also rolled out a new version of its home battery today, called Base Core. The device is built at its Austin, Texas factory, and it can store 39.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity, significantly more than those of its competitors. Customers can choose either one or two batteries. Base Power operates in Texas and Illinois. The round arrives as electricity demand has been skyrocketing due to economy-wide electrification and the rapid pace of AI data center construction. Over the last several years, the U.S. electrical grid has expanded after decades of stagnation. The surge in demand has strained the grid in many locations, most notably PJM, which hosts a large number of data centers. Portions of Illinois, where Base Power operates, are part of PJM's territory. Rather than charge thousands of dollars up front, as most home battery installers do, Base Power offers its batteries the device on a subscription basis. In the Houston area, for example, Base Power charges customers $695 to install a single battery, $19 per month, and 13.1 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, which is about the going rate in the region. Base Power, which owns the battery, sells stored electricity back to the grid during periods of high demand. Such services can pay handsomely. In regulated markets, Base Power works with utilities to place batteries in customers' homes to alleviate strain on the local grid. In both regulated and deregulated markets, homeowners can use the batteries to power their homes in case of blackouts. At nearly 40 kilowatt-hours, the batteries can provide backup power for a day or more. The new round was led by Ribbit, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, and JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group with participation from Altimeter, D1 Capital Partners, Sands Capital, Coatue, Layer Global, and Energy Impact Partners, Thrive Capital, a16z, Lightspeed, Trust Ventures, CapitalG, and others. Base Power was co-founded by Zach Dell, who serves as CEO. His father, Dell CEO Michael Dell, did not participate in the round.

Base Power today is announcing a $1 billion Series D financing at a $13 billion post-money valuation, alongside the launch of Base Core: a home battery desig...