Base Power raises $1B Series D at $13 billion valuation

Base Power, which installs batteries in customers’ backyards rather than seeking large land parcels near grid connections, has raised another $1 billion Series D at a $13 billion post-money valuation — less than a year after its last billion-dollar round. The startup has installed more than 500 megawatt-hours of storage over the past few years.

Base Power is installing about 100 batteries per day, according to a Wall Street Journal report, and hopes to double that by the end of the year — roughly 8 megawatt-hours of storage per day. Alongside the funding, the company rolled out a new home battery, Base Core, built at its Austin, Texas factory. The device can store 39.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity, significantly more than competing products, and customers can choose one or two batteries. Base Power operates in Texas and Illinois.

The round arrives as electricity demand has been skyrocketing due to economywide electrification and the rapid pace of AI data center construction. The U.S. electrical grid has expanded over the last several years after decades of stagnation, but the surge in demand has strained the grid in many locations, most notably PJM — the regional grid operator whose territory includes the parts of Illinois where Base Power operates.

Rather than charging thousands of dollars up front like most home battery installers, Base Power sells its batteries on a subscription basis. In the Houston area, for example, it charges customers $695 to install a single battery, $19 per month, and 13.1 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity — about the going rate in the region. Base Power, which retains ownership of the battery, sells stored electricity back to the grid during periods of high demand. In regulated markets, it works with utilities to place batteries in customers’ homes to ease strain on the local grid; in both regulated and deregulated markets, homeowners can also use the batteries — which hold nearly 40 kilowatt-hours — for backup power during blackouts, 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, Energy Impact Partners, Thrive Capital, a16z, Lightspeed, Trust Ventures, and CapitalG, among 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.

Why it matters

Base Power’s fast follow-on round shows investors betting that distributed, subscription-based home batteries can scale faster than utility-scale storage to meet demand from electrification and AI data centers — a bet that could ease strain on grids like PJM’s as new load comes online.