Base Power just charged into rarefied air with a $1B Series C that’s got both Silicon Valley and ERCOT buzzing. The Austin-based energy startup, founded in 2023 by Zach Dell (CEO) and Justin Lopas (COO), pulled in backing from Addition’s Lee Fixel with a syndicate that reads like a cap-table greatest hits, Trust Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed, a16z, Altimeter, StepStone, Elad Gil, 137 Ventures, Terrain, Waybury, and new names Ribbit, CapitalG, Spark, BOND, Lowercarbon, Avenir, Glade Brook, Positive Sum & 1789. Pre-money val: $3B. Total raised: $1.2B+. That’s not momentum, that’s grid current.
Base Power’s HQ sits on 305 S Congress Ave, Austin, the former Austin American-Statesman site now reborn as a domestic battery factory. Its mission: make the grid smarter by wiring homes with high-capacity 20-50 kWh batteries that deliver 48 hrs of backup and participate in power markets. Customers lease the systems monthly, and Base Power aggregates the fleet into a distributed virtual power plant. Each home becomes a node earning $ from grid services while keeping the lights steady. In a state where the weather swings from blistering heat to blackouts, that’s not luxury, it’s leverage.
Zach Dell cut his teeth in finance at Thrive Capital and Blackstone before seeing energy markets as the next frontier. Justin Lopas spent years at SpaceX & Anduril turning complex hardware dreams into manufacturing reality. Add Jared Greene (Head of Software), ex-Starlink engineering lead, and you get a founding trio that bridged venture, defense tech & industrial execution. They didn’t just engineer batteries, they engineered trust in a power market that never sleeps.
In less than 2 years they’ve deployed 100 MWh of residential capacity across Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth & Houston. Partnerships with Lennar, Bandera Electric Co-op & GVEC are expanding the footprint. The company earned ADER certification to bid its fleet directly into the Texas market, a milestone few startups can touch. Each install is more than a backup, it’s a piece of a living, breathing grid that pays for itself in stability.
The Series C fuel goes straight into scaling U.S. manufacturing & software for national expansion into deregulated markets like CA & NY, plus pilots in regulated territories where demand is spiking. Base Power plans to launch its Gen 4 battery, expand its factory network, and hire across engineering & ops to keep pace with growth. The goal is simple: turn home energy from a cost center into an asset class.
Base Power didn’t just raise capital, it captured attention. Because when finance meets physics & execution meets belief, you don’t just power homes, you power change.
