Additional reporting from Iain Martin.
Austin-based Base Power, a provider of home batteries for backup power, is in talks to raise around $1 billion at a $12 billion valuation,
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Austin-based Base Power, a provider of home batteries for backup power, is in talks to raise around $1 billion at a $12 billion valuation, four sources familiar with the matter told Forbes. Ribbit Capital is in talks to lead the round, one of the sources said.
Base Power and Ribbit Capital did not respond to Forbes’ request for comment.
The Information first reported on the fundraise.
Founded in 2023 by Zach Dell, son of billionaire computer pioneer Michael Dell, and Justin Lopas, Base Power installs and maintains large capacity home batteries which can serve as backup power if the main grid goes down. It also sells electricity at cheaper prices primarily to residents in Texas and part of Illinois. Acting as a power plant, Base Power charges its fleet of scattered home batteries from the grid when prices are cheap and demand is low, like late at night or mid-day. Then it sells excess power back to the main grid when demand is high during peak times, lowering electricity costs and helping stabilize the grid.
Homeowners are increasingly dealing with grid reliability issues thanks to severe weather conditions and aging infrastructure. That’s bound to only get worse with the AI boom leading to a rise in electricity-guzzling data centers across the country. But backup generators can cost up to $15,000. Base Power’s 10,000 customers pay just $695 to install the battery and a $19 monthly subscription fee, the Wall Street Journal reported in February. Customers receive one or two battery packs the size of air conditioning units that sit outside their homes, offering 25 and 50 kilowatt-hours of storage.
In October 2025, Base Power raised $1 billion in Series C funding from big name backers like Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, valuing the startup at $4 billion. While Michael Dell seemingly hasn’t invested in the startup, he does offer support from the sidelines. “There’s a guy named Dell building a great company in Austin,” he said in a post on LinkedIn.
Dell’s interest in energy traces back to his college days when he worked on a project to convert human waste into biogas in India, according to the Wall Street Journal report. He also tried to raise money for a solar farm in Hawaii— an idea investors rebuffed. He went on to work as a private equity analyst at Blackstone and later joined Thrive Capital as an investor, where he met cofounder Lopas while on a factory tour at Anduril where he worked as the head of manufacturing. Lopas previously was a lead engineer at SpaceX.
While Base Power is currently focused on the Texas electricity market, Dell ultimately wants to become the world’s largest energy retailer. “We have a supply demand problem in energy today and we need more supply. The best way to do it is in a distributed way,” he said speaking at The Hill and Valley Forum in Washington in March.
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