Base Power Raises $1B led by Addition, with Trust Ventures, Valor Equity, Thrive, Lightspeed, a16z, Altimeter, Stepstone, Elad Gil

At just 2 years old, Base Power has become one of the fastest-growing distributed energy companies in the U. S. Founded by Zach Dell and Justin Lopas, the company just announced a $1 billion Series C led by Addition. All other major investors are re-investing, including Trust Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Thrive, Lightspeed, a16z, Altimeter, Stepstone, Elad Gil, 137Ventures, Terrain, and Waybury. New major investors include Ribbit, CapitalG, Spark, BOND, Lowercarbon, Avenir, Glade Brook, Positive Sum, and 1789. Zach breaks down: • How Base Power is reinventing America’s energy grid with distributed batteries. • Scaling from $200M Series B to $1B Series C in < 6 months. • Building Base Factory One in Austin and plans for more domestic manufacturing. • Why AI and data centers make energy the new bottleneck for innovation. • The culture, team, & investors powering one of America’s most ambitious startups. 5 Key Takeaways 1. Strategic Investor Network – Beyond top venture firms, Base Power’s backers include Lennar (homebuilding), Starwood (real estate), and university endowments like WashU. These strategic investors bring distribution channels, deployment partnerships, and institutional credibility 2. Hypergrowth Trajectory – The company grew 30% month-over-month, has thousands on its waitlist, and is already doing millions in monthly revenue. 3. Domestic Manufacturing – Base is building its first factory in downtown Austin, repurposing the old Austin American-Statesman printing press, with plans for a second plant already underway. 4. Grid Bottleneck & AI – Energy is now the key constraint for AI/data centers. Base’s distributed battery model offers faster, cheaper deployment than traditional interconnection queue. 5. Culture as Differentiator – Base Power embodies a “chop wood, carry water” culture, with IC-driven leadership, top-tier engineering hires from Tesla, SpaceX, Anduril, and a flat, hands-on team structure. 1. Zach Dell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zach-dell-a631a554/ 2. Molly O’Shea: ⁠https://x.com/MollySOShea⁠ 3. Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryvc⁠ Brought to you by: Brex https://brex.com/sourcery—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. As a Sourcery Listener you get: 75,000 points after spending $3,000 on Brex card(s), white-glove onboarding, $5,000 in AWS credits, $2,500 in OpenAI credits, & access to $180k+ in SaaS discounts. On top of $500 toward Brex travel, $300 in cashback, plus exclusive perks (like billboards..) visit → https://brex.com/sourceryTuring https://turing.com/sourcery—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. Visit: https://turing.com/sourceryCarta http://carta.com/sourcery—Carta connects founders, investors, and limited partners through software purpose-built for private capital. Trusted by 65,000+ companies in 160+ countries, Carta’s platform of software & services lays the groundwork so you can build, invest, and scale with confidence. Visit: https://carta.com/sourceryKalshi https://kalshi.com/sourcery—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourcery Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What SpaceX did to aerospace, what Andrew did to defense, no one has done to energy. If you look at the energy industry, it is this kind of sad combination of the largest and least innovative companies in the economy. The most valuable asset of the company is the team. Companies are just a bunch of people sitting in a room, welding things and clicking keys on keyboards. And if you don't have the best damn people in that room, like, you're just gonna lose. You've never heard someone say, "I love my power company." And we gotta change that. If you're listening to this and you wanna do the best work of your career with the smartest people you've ever worked with, you won't find a place where you'll be pushed by your peers in the way you will at Base.

• 0:29Molly O'Shea?

  Last time we talked, you raised a $200 million Series B led by Edition. Zach and Justin, congratulations on your $200 million Series B announcement. And today, you have some extra news, so can you share what happened?

• 0:43Speaker 00

  Edition is leading a billion-dollar Series C.

• 0:45Molly O'Shea?

  A billion-dollar Series C?

• 0:47Speaker 00

  That is correct.

• 0:47Molly O'Shea?

  Energy has also become a huge bottleneck in AI and superintelligence, but I'm not sure many people understand.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  There's two things. One is electricity cost function and how it influences what technologies get built and what doesn't. And then there's the actual access to megawatts problem.

• 1:01Molly O'Shea?

  I know you're thinking in megawatts, but have you listened to the recent Jensen and BG2 pod?

• 1:06Speaker 00

  I have. We're thinking in gigawatts.

• 1:08Molly O'Shea?

  The race to gigawatts is on.

• 1:20Molly O'Shea?

  Zach, welcome back to Sorcery.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  Thank you, Molly. It's good to be back.

• 1:25Molly O'Shea?

  Thanks for having me at your new factory.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Yes, you are clearly standing right in front of Base Factory One.

• 1:33Molly O'Shea?

  I had no idea the weather in Austin is so great this time of year. Like, it's not that hot.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's blue skies, cool temps. Can't beat it.

• 1:42Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so I believe we last talked about, maybe like five, six months ago, and I had no idea this was gonna happen so quick, but... Last time we talked, you raised a $200 million Series B led by Edition. And today, you have some extra news. So can you share what happened?

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Yes, Edition is leading a billion-dollar Series C.

• 2:05Molly O'Shea?

  A billion-dollar Series C?

• 2:07Speaker 00

  That is correct. Yes.

• 2:08Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  $1 billion.

• 2:11Molly O'Shea?

  $1 billion. How did this happen? How did you guys raise so much capital in such a short period of time?

• 2:17Speaker 00

  So I'll say a couple of things. The round is led by Edition. All of our existing major investors are reinvesting. So Thrive, our earliest backer, Valor, who led our Series A, Altimeter, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Allot Gill,

• 2:31Speaker 00

  you know, a number of other firms that have been on the cap table and investing in every round. And then we're adding other firms to the cap table as part of the round. So Ribbit, Capital G, Bond, Spark, Glade Brook, Positive Sum,

• 2:45Speaker 00

  and Lower Carbon, Avenir, a bunch of other firms that share our kind of long-term orientation and conviction for this opportunity. What I'll say is a couple, you know, a couple more things, I guess. One is that the business momentum is undeniable. We're growing incredibly quickly.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  We're adding customers on the order of 30% a month for a month, doing millions of dollars a month in revenue. We've got more demand than we can serve. We've got thousands of customers on our waitlist and a multi-month backlog. And, you know, the business is ramping in a way where capital allows us to unlock the next phase of growth. And, you know, as you can see, given your standing clearly right in front of our first factory, we're making investments today that will help us scale into the future on a five- and 10-year-plus time horizon. So, you know, our business is vertically integrated, capital intense,

• 3:42Speaker 00

  quite complicated, and requires, you know, a lot of investment and planning and execution. And so this round is just kind of the next step in that story. It did come faster than we had kind of planned or anticipated, although we don't do much like specific planning around fundraises. We think about it in a more holistic way around how much capital do we need to get to the next phase? What is the most efficient use of that capital, you know, between now and when we get there? And, you know, I think Lee, who's on our board, who led the B, as you mentioned, saw the business momentum, saw the opportunity to pull forward some of that vertical integration. And you know, saw the execution of the team and the size of the prize kind of on the other side and said, hey, you know, I want to catalyze this, uh, this round and, and invest

• 4:25Speaker 00

  a lot more capital and our existing cap table is, you know, excited to participate and we're able to bring on some really exceptional firms, um, to partner with us on this mission.

• 4:34Molly O'Shea?

  So the investors that you have in this round are quite diverse. You have lower carbon that focuses a lot on sustainability and climate. You also have Gladebrook, you have Positive Sum, you have 1789, and then you have some really heavyweight investors like Ribbit Capital G, Bond, Valor Equity, at addition. How do you think about this balance of strategics involved in this financing and how do you manage so many names?

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we, we think of our cap table as a strategic asset to your point. So, uh, there are the growth funds and the kind of sector-specific funds like lower carbon, um, that bring unique insight and experience and kind of pattern matching around other companies of our ilk or, or similar businesses that are going after large incumbent-dominated industries with kind of new business models. Uh, take, you know, SpaceX, obviously Valor is an early investor there. Uh, many of our investors were, were early investors in, in companies like Uber and, and some even in, in companies like Amazon and Tesla and businesses that, um, you know, are going after large industries with new business models and, you

• 5:43Speaker 00

  know, they're technology-driven and, and R and D focused and engineering-led. And so, uh, we're adding folks to the cap table who see that kind of pattern match and want to be a part of, of that growth. Um, and then, yeah, we, we've added some strategics to the cap table. So Lennar has been an investor. They're obviously, uh, one of the largest single-family home builders in the country. They've been an investor since our seed round. Uh, we have Starwood on our cap table, which is one of the largest real estate developers in the country. Um, and maybe a hint as to where some of our next products are going. Um, and we can talk more about that. And then we've got some institutions on the cap table as well. Uh, the Wash U Endowment is investing directly. We have a couple other endowments investing, um, that we're, you know, we're really excited to, to be a steward

• 6:25Speaker 00

  of their capital too. So I think it's about bringing, you know, resources, bringing expertise, uh, bringing, you know, sector-specific knowledge to the, to the team, right? We think of these investors as part of our team, uh, and we're excited to leverage all they bring, you know, to help us in our next phase of growth.

• 6:40Molly O'Shea?

  I reached out to some of your investors for some questions for you. And one of them is of all the investors who backed you, one, one of their names starts with E and ends with lad.

• 6:55Molly O'Shea?

  Who is your most favorite and most helpful investor?

• 7:01Speaker 00

  A lot is definitely the most handsome.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  We, we, uh, we, you know, you, you can't, you can't pick favorites here. We spend a lot of time with our, our board, you know, Valor and, and addition. The addition team is, you know, I think the, the board members and the, the people who lead these firms, you know, Lee, in the case of addition and, and Antonio, in the case of Valor, get a lot of the public recognition, but their teams are incredibly strong. So Rochny and Todd at addition and, and John Scholken and Anna at, at Valor and the rest of their team. They, they, you know, they've got incredibly talented people that have, that have seen, like I said, businesses like this. They know how to help us. They know what problems we're going to face.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  And they're incredibly good. I mean, Valor had a team of people down in our office for a couple of months, helping us work on some of our deployment factory scaling problems in the early days. And they were extremely helpful. Addition has been really involved in our regulated utility business, which is becoming a larger and larger focus for the company. So, uh, super grateful to have both those firms on our board. Uh, obviously very grateful to have a lad on the cap table. And, uh, you know, he's, he's certainly one of our favorites too.

• 8:11Molly O'Shea?

  A lot is an interesting, great, great guy to have on the cap table. Another question that we have from one of your investors, it's Eric at Ultimater. And so he mentioned that base has a refreshingly blue collar culture. Can you tell us more about the phrase chop wood, carry water? And what does it mean embodying that and other mantras within the culture?

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the concept that there's no job too small and. We get up every day, we come to the office and we get to work and you know, we show up early, we stay late, we do the little things. We don't sit around thinking about, you know, strategy and, you know, pontificating. Basically, we just like get to work and I mean, you can literally see it happening behind me. These are not paid actors. Like this is, this is our HQ. This is the middle of the office where, you know, until we move all of our, our, our, our stuff into Base Factory One where you're standing in front of, like we're just doing a bunch of the, the assembly of our test modules, like literally right behind me right now. So, we get our hands dirty. You know, all of our leaders are ICs. You

• 9:13Speaker 00

  know, I'm still doing IC work all the time, every day today. And we take a lot of pride in that. And I think, you know, one thing to think about here is like, if you look at our, our leadership team, so to speak, it's basically the first five people at the company. And so the, these were the only ICs, right? They weren't like hired managers to go build teams to do the work, like these people did the work, right? So our first hire, Jared Green, was our head of software. He came from, you know, he led the laser topology team at SpaceX, the team that built the mesh that connects all the satellites in space. He's our first software engineer. He wrote the first line of code at Base. He's our, our head of software, right? Our head of deployments, Dana Paz, who was a manufacturing engineer at Anduril, leads all of our deployments efforts. Like the first batteries were installed by Dana. They weren't installed by people that Dana hired,

• 9:56Speaker 00

  right? So Cole Jones, our head of go-to-market, he ran go-to-market at Starlink. The first customers, like I, I vividly remember Cole and I getting in the car, driving out to Round Rock, knocking on doors and trying to convince people to be our first customers when we had, you know, no product, no revenue, no customers, nothing to show for. By the way, I wouldn't recommend knocking on random doors in Texas, because you get some, you get some particularly aggressive people, but it is an interesting learning experience. So, you know, I think we have a team of, of doers and people who are really not afraid to get their hands dirty, not afraid to do IC work. And it's a really good example to set, you know, as we continue to scale the team.

• 10:33Molly O'Shea?

  Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the US. Nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Brex's designs help you spend smarter and move faster. Their all-in-one solution combines checking, treasury, and FDIC protection into one powerful account.

• 11:04Molly O'Shea?

  You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, ServiceTitan, Hims, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid, trust and use Brex.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Start today at brex.com/sorcery. That's B R E X dot com slash sorcery.

• 11:36Molly O'Shea?

  Talking about your founding team and founding the company, you were at Thrive, you've worked across finance, and then you and Justin came together through his time at Andorol. Can you talk a little bit more about how you guys came together? How you got conviction on this? I know we already talked about this in our first podcast together, and you guys have a really great explanation. But could you share more about how you came together and the opportunity that you saw?

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I'd been studying this kind of energy paradigm shift for three to four years prior. So I'd started my career at Blackstone, a big private equity firm in New York, and I had kind of looked at opportunities in the space there. And then at Thrive, I kind of picked the thesis back up and started studying the battery value chain. And the way I would describe the paradigm shift, very simply, is the last five decades of energy have been defined by coal and then natural gas. And the next five decades of energy will be defined by solar and battery storage. And by the way, it has nothing to do with ESG or climate change or anything like that. It has everything to do with cost, right? So the lowest marginal cost way to add a watt to the grid, to add a megawatt, will be solar and storage. And that kind of clicked with me in 2018, 2019,

• 12:43Speaker 00

  when I was at Blackstone, and really stuck with me. And then when I was at Thrive, we made larger investments in SpaceX and in Andorol, and I got to see those companies from up close. And it was a pattern match. It was like, oh, wow. What SpaceX did to aerospace, what Andorol did to defense, no one has done to energy, right? If you look at the energy industry, it is this kind of sad combination of the largest and least innovative companies in the economy. They're not engineering-led, they're not tech-focused, they're not R and D-driven. And when I met Justin, I realized like, this is the person I was looking for to kind of partner with me and go build the kind of SpaceX of energy. And so after we met, and we met as part of the Andorol building process, I went down to do a factory tour, and Justin was my tour guide.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  And we spent all day hanging out. We became friends and we started texting and chatting and throwing ideas back and forth. And I called him one day and I said, hey, you know, I've got a pretty crazy idea to go build the SpaceX of energy and I need a co-founder. Are you interested? And he was like, yeah, I'm interested. Let's, let's chat. And so we spent the next three, four months kind of running down the opportunity. And then from the day we started the company, our, our kind of number, our number one focus, not kind of important focus, the number one focus was the team. Like the, the most valuable asset of the company is the team. Companies are just a bunch of people sitting in a room, you know, welding things and, and clicking keys on keyboards. And if you don't have the best damn people in that room, like you're just gonna lose. And so we have put an incredible amount of time and effort into recruiting, right? So we talked a little about our, our early team. We talked about our head of software, Jared, who came from Starlink.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Our head of go to market, Cole, who also came from Starlink, Dana, Dana, our head of deployments, who came from Endure. Our head of hardware, Dino, led power wall engineering at Tesla. He was there for 13 years. His team designed the power wall three. Uh, our head of manufacturing led model three battery manufacturing at Tesla. Our head of supply chain led procurement at SpaceX for 10 years. So we've got, you know, um, we've got just incredible players all over the field. And we spent a lot of time with them. We spent a lot of time trying to communicate to them the mission, the vision, the strategy, getting them really excited about what we're doing. Um, and that, that makes for a really strong culture, right? Because you have people here who are the best at what they do. They're incredibly intelligent. They respond really well to being challenged and being pushed. And so they just really build on each other when they get here. And, you know, you didn't ask this question, but I'll kind of make the, make the segue myself.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  You know, what does the billion dollars do for us? Like, yes, it allows us to build factories and invest in, you know, hard infrastructure and battery capex, but it also allows us to scale the team. And to build the future of American power, to build the modern power company, the electric era, we need the best engineers, operators and creatives in the world to join our team. And this capital allows us to go, to go do that, not because we're going to pay, you know, OpenAI and Meta salaries. We think about it a little bit differently, but because we can go tell these candidates and show them that we are willing to make the capital investments necessary to play this game on, on the biggest stage. And, you know, I'll say something to you that I've said to the team, which is like, this capital raise is necessary, but not sufficient to achieve our mission.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  And the game that we are playing. Which has become a global energy market leader, a billion dollars is just like the ante to sit at the poker table, right? Like now we're in the game and we can kind of get started. Before we were just kind of like playing around in the kiddie pool, right? Now we're like in the deep end and we can really, you know, start playing the game. And so, you know, this will be the beginning or just one of, you know, what will be future fundraises and, you know, future efforts to establish ourselves as a market leader. But all of that will be driven by the team that we build and it will remain a core focus of ours going forward.

• 16:17Molly O'Shea?

  It's so fascinating and impactful. I'm curious, as you mentioned with this funding, you're going to be hiring out, but like, what is the process for that? Like, how do you see the next couple milestones that you need to hit? And like, what are the teams underneath it that you have to fill out?

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, I mean, you're standing in front, standing in front of Base Factory One, which will be the site of our first custom manufactured base battery. I mean, it's happening behind you right here. Some of our, our modules going out for testing. So the next phase of the company is really landing our custom hardware, becoming the fastest deployer of battery storage in the world at the lowest landed cost in the world, right? Those are really the two kind of operational north stars of the business and every team will be working on that. So on the hardware side, it's developing the technology, working on our next generation product, working on some future products that we're not yet ready to talk about, but will be able to soon, which is all kind of pointed towards the broader north star of affordable, reliable power for all. On the software side, it's

• 17:14Speaker 00

  managing the network to make best use of these hundreds of megawatts and very soon gigawatts of capacity that we have on the grid. It's building the consumer facing software. It's managing all the internal processes to make our system more efficient. And then on the, on the go to market demand side, you know, this one is really exciting, I think, which is building the first beloved branded energy, right? I mean, you've never heard someone say, I love my power company and we got to change that, right? And so we have the opportunity to do some really innovative and exciting things. On the brand side, marketing, design, front-end engineering, which we think will be really differentiated in the industry. So we're hiring across hardware, supply chain, manufacturing, software, firmware,

• 17:58Speaker 00

  power electronics, design, marketing, sales, support, finance, business development, recruiting talent. Like, by the way, we have a two-person talent team that has built this team of 200 people. Now, they're incredibly good and they work super hard. And I spent a lot, and I'm not included in that. I spent a ton of my time on hiring, recruiting, and all of our six leads spent a bunch of their time on it, too. But we've got to build the team to build the team as well. So we're hiring across every part of the business, which is really exciting.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  In today's high-speed business world, staying ahead means using the smartest tools possible, including the powerful capabilities of artificial intelligence. Meet Turing Intelligence. Turing builds customizable AI systems designed to solve your mission-critical challenges, no matter your industry. From expert guidance to tailored projects, Turing helps top companies realize AI that's more capable, more adaptable, and more effective. With Turing, discover how AI can accelerate your business growth. To learn more, visit turing.com/sorcery, spelt S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. That's turing.com/sorcery.

• 19:01Molly O'Shea?

  One of the things that I remember from our first conversation that I was absolutely astonished by was the fact that people were moving across the country to come work for you. Have you seen that accelerate? Like, how many people on the team are coming from outside of the state or outside of, you know, Austin?

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot. I mean, I don't have a number off the top of my head, but I imagine it's close to half of the team is relocated to Austin to join us. Part of it is that Austin is a really awesome place to live. And I think people are figuring that out in mainstream, but it's still underrated, in my opinion. And I think Austin's best days are certainly ahead of it. And we're very early in the Austin arc. And I think the next decade for Austin is going to be really exciting. So it's a great place to live, but also a base is just a really fricking fun place to work. You're, you know, we like to have fun here. Like, we take our work very, very seriously, but we take ourselves not that seriously. So, you know, we crack jokes, we high-five, we laugh, we give each other a hard time. We've got inside jokes of the company. Like, it's just a very fun place to work.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  And so what often happens is we'll kind of nerd-snipe candidates with the interesting technical problems that we're working on and the scope of our ambition and the size of the opportunity. And they'll say, oh, you know, I'm interested, but you know, I live in the Bay or I live in New York and I'm not sure about Austin. And then they'll come for an onsite, which is the last phase of our interview process, which we can talk about. And they'll get hooked. They'll be intoxicated by the energy in the office, right? So you come in here and you see all the machines, you see the hardware and you see, you know, the engineering and you talk to the people. And you sit and you have lunch with our team, which, you know, we do lunch and dinner together, which is a big part of our culture. And people kind of become, you know, hooked on, on the energy in the office, no pun intended. And they want to be a part of that. So it's partially Austin, it's partially just the vibe and the culture base. It's a very, it's a very fun and interesting place to work.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  And then it's, you know, I think obviously the mission really speaks to people. And so people are willing to pick up their lives and relocate to work on something that they feel is really important.

• 20:54Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, I've tweeted this out before where, I mean, I, I definitely feel the energy of certain cities when I'm in them. And you feel the influence and the weight of like the legacy and everything. Infrastructurally that's built it, that it's, it's like traditionally, yes, like you go to New York for finance, for art. You go to San Francisco for tech, for AI, you go to LA for creative stuff. Like Texas, for me, like that seems like the energy capital of America, if not most of the world. And so like, as you think about that and you think about creating this new culture for energy there. What do you think are the like foundational principles that you're trying to instill for setting this new? I don't know, this next generation of energy?

• 21:38Speaker 00

  I think it's that you can do really ambitious things. And you can work on large scale projects and you can build factories. And you can, you know, bring new products to market with unique business models and you can take risk and you can win. And, and I think that in software world, you, there's a lot of downside protection and kind of, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's. You know, these businesses are largely not very capital intense. And you often see, you know, founders start a company and they try something, it doesn't work. And they start another company, tries to me, doesn't work. And then, you know, I think that's less prevalent in. Capital intense hardware manufacturing operate like it takes 10 years to get the business

• 22:21Speaker 00

  off the ground, right? Like we yeah, we've had a nice, you know, two and a half year run to get started, but like we're kind of this is still like the the opener to the to the main to the main event, right? Like we're just getting started and to build something of, you know, at scale in the energy industry. And, you know, we talked about the billion dollar anti, right? To like actually play in the large, kind of on the biggest stage. It takes a bunch of time and a bunch of capital and a bunch of, you know, damn hard work. And so I think that, you know, that mindset of like taking big swings, doing it in an analytically rigorous way, and having that belief that like we can shape the world around us, and we can build, you know, the grid of the future and the country that we want to live in. It's very inspiring to people, and it's certainly inspiring to me and the rest of our team.

• 23:06Molly O'Shea?

  Energy has also become a huge bottleneck in AI and superintelligence, but I'm not sure many people understand, like that's become a headline topic. It's a huge topic. It's very, it's intense, like it is a huge constraint. But I'm not sure many people understand it on the consumer level. Could you break down more of like what's happening on the ground and with your customers?

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, so there's, there's two things. One is just like the kind of electricity cost function and how it influences what technologies get built and what doesn't. And then there's the actual just like access to megawatts problem. So on the first point, this is, I think, pretty straightforward, but it's worth explaining. So electricity is a material percentage of the cost to do a bunch of things, right? Industrial processes and different kinds of technical innovation. And so as the cost of energy goes down, the number of things or manufacturing processes that become bankable or financeable go up, right? As the cost electricity goes up, the number of things that become bankable or finance will go down, right? So the higher,

• 24:05Speaker 00

  you know, the cost of electricity in the country has gone up roughly two and a half X the last 20 years, like that means that we can't do things. We can't innovate. We can't, you know, build big factories at the rate that we could if if prices were going down, right? So if we want to build more data centers, if we want to build more factories, we need to drive the cost electricity down, which is obviously why we're here. So that's, that's one piece of the equation, the the cost piece. The other is just the access to megawatts, right? So today, if you want to put new megawatts on the grid, Before base, you have to wait in what's called the interconnection queue. You have to get a permitting and kind of interconnection study done. It takes a lot of time. There's a, you know, there's a kind of a construction project involved.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  You have to go through the, the interconnecting utility, probably the RTO or the ISO or basically the, the kind of conductor of the, of the grid effectively. And I'm, I'm generalizing here for the, for the lay audience. And it's, it's complicated and it takes a lot of time. And obviously this AI build out is happening very quickly. Like we don't have time. We can't wait in three year interconnection queues or five interconnection queues. And so what base is doing is we're deploying capacity much faster and much more cost effectively than, than existing solutions because we go where the interconnection already is. So we put the batteries where the grid already is. We don't need new poles and wires. It's a much faster system. We don't wait in the traditional interconnection queue. And I'll just tell you like, you know, we'll deploy on the order of 20 megawatts this month.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  You know, we'll do on the order of, you know, 100 megawatts a month, you know, roughly this time next year to get 100 megawatts in a month is just, you know, way faster than, than you can get 100 megawatts deployed with any kind of existing technology. Right? I mean, if you want to put 100 megawatts of batteries on the grid today, depending on the state, it's going to take you anywhere from two to five years. Right? And to, to say that we can do that in a month, like that's a massive breakthrough. And so we're actually working on a, a product that we call speed to power, which we'll be able to talk more publicly about soon when we announce our first partnership where we go deploy 100 megawatt, 200 megawatts of distributed batteries. And like I said, you know, we can do that in a quarter or two. Right? And then we basically contract that capacity out to a data center developer to offset their

• 26:12Speaker 00

  load at the data center to give them kind of distributed flexibility. And there's different things that you can do with that flexibility in Texas or some regulatory implications outside of Texas. It's more about capacity and power supply. So we're working on products to help data center developers get access to power faster. And we're really excited to bring that to market in the near future.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  Sorcery is proudly sponsored by Carta. Carta is transforming the private marketplace, connecting founders, investors, and limited partners through software purpose-built for private capital. Trusted by more than 65,000 companies in over 160 countries, Carta's platform of software and services lays the groundwork so you can build, invest, and scale with confidence. Carta's fund administration platform supports over 9,000 funds and SPVs, representing nearly $185 billion in assets under management, with tools designed to enhance the strategic impact of fund CFOs. For more information, visit carta.com/sorcery. That's C-A-R-T-A dot com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y.

• 27:16Molly O'Shea?

  So BASE is also now qualified for Texas AIDER program. Could you explain what that is?

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it effectively allows us to bid into the ancillary services market. So it kind of qualifies us as a grid-scale resource. So kind of historically or traditionally, behind-the-meter batteries or home batteries were not able to participate in the same way, in the market, in the same way that utility-scale resources were. That's kind of silly, because a megawatt is a megawatt, right? And so there's, you know, no, there should be no preference to a big shipping container battery in the middle of a farm field somewhere versus a battery that's behind the meter at a home, right? That's aggregated via software into one big battery. And so this program that ERCOT has come up with, which is really innovative, allows these smaller aggregations to participate in this part of the market. I believe we're the fastest ever to qualify for the certification. And very soon here,

• 28:06Speaker 00

  we'll have the largest aggregation by a wide margin. And we'll continue to grow quickly and we'll be the largest aggregation of shared battery batteries in the country.

• 28:15Molly O'Shea?

  You mentioned this a little bit, but what markets do you see beyond Texas that are the most urgent and most attractive for BASE?

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, so again, two ways to answer this. One is the like kind of fundamental top-down, which I'll talk about in a second. And one is like the BASE bottoms up, like where are we at? So I'll just tell you, we are in advanced conversations with a number of utilities across the country, both in like bilateral agreements. Like utility need capacity. We can give you capacity faster and cheaper than anyone. Let's do a deal. And also in RFPs, kind of traditional RFPs where the utilities say, hey, we need, we need capacity and a bunch of people bid and, you know, we get selected. And then existing programs where we can just show up and start putting batteries in the ground, you know, kind of under the construct of existing programs. And there's kind of on the order of 10 really interesting opportunities that we're evaluating. And we'll probably announce in the next couple of months, what our first outside of Texas deployment will look like.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  And we're looking at, you know, a bunch of states across the country and we're really excited to, to make that next step for the business. What I'll say on the kind of top down piece is, you know, where are batteries needed? Well, they're most acutely needed where there's a bunch of solar, right? So look at, at states that have high solar penetration as a, as a total percentage of, as a percentage of total, total generation. California obviously is up there, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona. And, you know, Florida, so we'll, you know, we, we think that those states will be most interested in our technology. Now there's nuances with regards to regulation and, you know, how the policies work in, in certain states to make them more or less interesting.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  But over time, you know, our bet is that most of the grid starts to look like Texas and California where you have, you know, a lot of solar because the cost is really low, which means a bunch of batteries will follow, which, you know, is obviously the future that we are playing into as a, as a battery developer.

• 30:05Molly O'Shea?

  From more of a founder standpoint, operationally, so sorcery sponsored by Brex are all about performance. They're their modern intelligence finance stack. Spend smarter, move faster. Don't forget that. So I'm thinking from your perspective, like because this company is growing so, so, so fast, like what are the principles that you use as a leader to help keep your mindset sharp and keep the ship steering straight?

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll go, I'll go back to the team. I think the best thing one can possibly do is make sure you hire the right people. Because. It all starts with the people in the room. And so we, you know, there's a really strong temptation when you're growing quickly to lower the hiring bar because there's a bunch of demand. There's a lot of things we need to do. And we interview candidates that are very good, right? They're good. And, you know, we have a conversation about them. It's like, well, this person's good. They're not great, but maybe we can make them great. Right? And we have resisted that temptation to lower the bar. We've kept the hiring bar really, really high. And that's painful and it's, you know, time consuming and it means you gotta talk to more candidates. But when you do that, then a lot of these problems solve themselves because these people

• 31:14Speaker 00

  become your culture and they help, you know, reinforce all the good things that we talk about at base, which is like, you know, job too small, you know, bias towards action, prioritize speed, attention to detail, you know, best idea wins no matter who it comes from, first principles thinking, and they, they know that stuff and they kind of do it almost, you know, by default. So, so number one is, is, is hiring. And then number two is just extreme focus and ruthless prioritization. And I think, you know, it's really easy for people to take on a lot of stuff and find, you know, interesting problems to work on when you're in an industry like energy that is so expansive. There's so many different things we could go do and opportunities we could go chase and people who are coming to us all the time with, oh, let's partner on this thing or that thing.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  And we stay super focused on the North Stars of the business and we align as a team on those North Stars every quarter and we reevaluate them and we debate them. And that I think gives, gives folks here a lot of clarity on what, what to work on and what matters. Like if you walk around the office and you ask people like, what are you working on? And why does it, why is it helping the company? Everyone from an intern to, you know, our, our earliest people, they'll tell you like, oh, well, here are our North Stars as a business and here are the things I'm focused on that ladder up to those North Stars. And I think that level of focus is, is really important.

• 32:27Molly O'Shea?

  And I'm curious, who is someone that? Has shaped the way that you think as a founder?

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Honestly, I've learned more from my team than any one person outside of the business. I've learned a ton from, you know, my dad, obviously, I've learned a ton from Josh. I've learned a ton from just, you know, admiring and kind of analyzing and observing other CEOs and founders throughout history or folks that are operating today, but the strongest learnings have come from Justin and Jared and Dana and Cole and Dino. And the rest of our team here, we've got some incredibly talented operators that have lots of experience, right? They've scaled businesses from small to big. They've worked on, you know, safety critical systems. They've run massive, you know, 100-person teams.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  And we're in the trenches together every day. And so the feedback loops are really tight. And, you know, we're constantly, you know, I think we have a, we have a very flat culture. Like, you know, my desk looks like the intern's desk. I park where the intern parks. Like, we don't have a shiny corner office thing. We're like, you know, I sit and eat the same lunch with the same people at the same picnic table in the backyard, right? And so do all of our leaders. And so we have this very kind of like, you know, you're out of college engineer. I say something dumb in a meeting, like that engineer calls me out. They're like, Zach, you're wrong. This is why. I'm like, okay, great. Thank you for, you know, so it's, I'm learning a ton from the team here because we just have like a lot of trust, a lot of fluid communication. And, and so, you know, I'm very grateful to work with the group that I work with.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  And I tell you, if you're listening to this and you want to do the best work of your career with the smartest people you've ever worked with, you won't find a place where you'll be pushed by your peers in the way you will at Base. And they're smart, they're capable, and they're going to help get the best out of you. And they've certainly gotten the best out of me. And I hope to continue to improve with them and for them.

• 34:15Molly O'Shea?

  Well, you've sold me. I have FOMO now. It sounds like an amazing culture.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you're already down here in Austin, standing in front of our factory. So, you know, we've got open jobs on the website. I don't know how Brex will feel about you shutting down the pod, but, you know, we can, we can.

• 34:29Molly O'Shea?

  Maybe we can collaborate. Maybe we can have a Base Brex pod.

• 34:36Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so as we wrap up, I want to know, what are you most looking forward to? This is like a crazy question, because again, like when we first talked, this was only like six months ago. Did you know, by the way, on Karta, like there, the median time to raise for a series B to a series C is 18 to 24 months? You did that in six. So between that, you're you're moving at hyperscale. So I'm really curious, like, what are you most looking forward to, maybe in the next six months?

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Well, I'm looking forward to turning on that factory behind you. That will be exciting. I sound like a broken record, but I'm really excited to continue scaling our team and adding incredible people here. I mean, it's so fun and energizing, Molly, to come into work every day and sit next to the smartest people you've ever worked with, working on the hardest problems you could ever imagine. Like, there's just nothing better. Like, that's how I want to spend my life for the rest of my life, is working on hard problems with smart people. And I get to do it every day at base, like to the max. And so, you know, as part of this round, you know, I think we've already had folks kind of coming to us, and I think that's only going to pick up. And so I'm super excited to level up the team and just keep adding exceptional people to push our thinking, push our ambition.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  But more tactically, I'm super excited to open that factory behind you, start moving batteries off the line, enter our next state, launch our Speed to Power product with our first partner, talk a little bit more about some of the new products we're working on, expand our partnership with regulated utilities, both in Texas and outside of Texas. So there's a lot, a lot to look forward to.

• 36:07Molly O'Shea?

  I know you're thinking in megawatts, but have you listened to the recent Jensen and BG2 pod?

• 36:13Speaker 00

  I have. We're thinking in gigawatts. We, yeah, we will be.

• 36:18Molly O'Shea?

  The race to gigawatts is on.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Very soon. I mean, I don't know who the fastest developer ever to a gigawatt is, but we're going to challenge that pace. And we'll be adding gigawatts on an annual basis in the very near future.

• 36:31Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, I think Cal she should actually make a market on that. That's a good idea.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, please. Tarek, make the market. How fast does base get to a gigawatt? I'd love to bet on that.

• 36:43Molly O'Shea?

  You will be exempt. I know for a fact that is not gonna, that's not gonna fly. But I don't know. And I think I won't be able to to trade on that one either.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Take the under at your risk.

• 36:55Molly O'Shea?

  I'll take the under. Well, it was a pleasure to have you on. Congrats again. I'm excited to have you back on in another six months. Maybe sooner. Maybe I'll come to the the factory and tour it and make some fun videos there. I love factory tours.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  That'd be great. Thanks for having me, Molly. Really fun.

• 37:14Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.