Founding Story and the SpaceX/Anduril Pattern Match

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—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/sourcery
  • Turing—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/sourcery
  • Carta—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/sourcery
  • Kalshi—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/