Thermal energy storage (TES) technology provider Antora Energy has closed a US$550 million Series C funding round to accelerate deployment of its thermal battery storage systems for industrial facilities and data centres in the US.
Announced 30 July, the oversubscribed round was co-led by G2 Venture Partners and Eclipse, with participation from new investors including Ribbit Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Activate Capital, John Doerr, Westly Group, StepStone Group, and Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures.
Existing investors Decarbonization Partners, Impact Science Ventures, Trust Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Lowercarbon Capital also participated in the round.
Deployment plans
Antora said the funding will support deployment of large-scale projects across the US, enable expansion of production capacity, establish a second US manufacturing hub, and strengthen the company’s domestic supply chain.
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The funding follows Antora’s deployment of Big Stone, a 5GWh system in South Dakota. The project advanced from initial construction to delivering energy in under 12 months.
Antora signed a long-term heat offtake agreement for the project with POET Bioprocessing.
Antora’s thermal batteries store heat in solid carbon blocks at temperatures up to 2,400°C. The system charges by using electricity to resistively heat the carbon, which has high thermal conductivity enabling fast charging. Energy can be stored for multiple days to meet continuous industrial demand.
The company has developed thermophotovoltaic (TPV) technology that converts light from the heated carbon blocks into electricity.
The technology allows factories and processing plants to purchase electricity during low-price periods or charge from on-site renewable sources, reducing costs while addressing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial heating and cooling processes.
Andrew Ponec, co-founder and CEO of Antora, stated that the company is addressing energy bottlenecks constraining industrial growth. “Antora has shown we can help break that bottleneck—delivering energy fast, at massive scale, with American innovation.”
Manufacturing capacity
Antora’s San Jose, California facility has been expanded into a three-building manufacturing campus. The company’s workforce includes welders, electricians, pipefitters, and machinists, and Antora claims its deployments have created and supported hundreds of manufacturing and construction jobs.
The Series C funding comes as data centres and industrial facilities face mounting challenges securing reliable power on accelerated timelines. The company has a growing pipeline of signed agreements with hyperscalers and industrial customers, though specific customer names and project details were not disclosed.
Thermal storage currently represents a minor segment of the overall energy storage market. In May, MGA Thermal and Knode commenced a Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) study for a 195MWh electro-thermal energy storage project at Tronox’s Kwinana facility in Western Australia.
Under a Heat-as-a-Service agreement, the system will supply Tronox, a global chemicals and mining company, with approximately 20 tonnes of renewable steam per hour.
