Antora Energy Secures $550 Million for Thermal Battery Technology

Antora Energy, a company developing thermal battery technology for energy storage, announced on Thursday it has secured $550 million in a Series C financing round. The round was co-led by G2 Venture Partners and Eclipse, with participation from investors including Decarbonization Partners (BlackRock/Temasek), Lowercarbon Capital, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

The San Jose, California-based company has raised a total of $770 million since its inception in 2017. Antora recently deployed what it describes as one of the world's largest battery storage projects, a 5-gigawatt-hour system in South Dakota.

Antora intends to use the new capital to speed up the deployment of large-scale projects across the country, aiming to meet surging energy demand driven by AI and data centers. The company's technology stores electricity as heat in insulated blocks of solid carbon, which can be delivered around the clock as heat or power.

The company claims its factory-built modular solutions can serve various industries, including chemical, food, and steel production, as well as data centers. These systems aim to avoid supply-constrained critical minerals and long construction timelines, offering fast-deploying, clean energy. Antora also states its San Jose factory is among the largest battery gigafactories in the U.S.