Two SpaceX Alumni Bet on Solar and Batteries to Power AI Boom
▼ Summary
– Ambrosia Energy, founded by SpaceX alumni, builds solar-plus-battery power plants that deliver electricity at $100 per megawatt-hour, cheaper and faster than natural gas plants.
– The startup simplifies battery packs by trickle-charging during the day and slowly discharging at night, reducing system strain and cutting costs to 1.5 times its battery cell price.
– Ambrosia began constructing a West Texas power plant in January, with completed sections operating at 100% capacity since six weeks ago, aiming for gigawatt-scale by the end of the decade.
– The company targets 20–30 megawatt projects initially, using off-the-shelf parts, with plans for a custom factory in Austin to enable larger builds in shorter timeframes.
– Co-founders Sara Spangelo and Ben Longmier, previously at SpaceX (via Swarm acquisition), compare the modular power plant approach to deploying a satellite constellation, emphasizing iterative learning and scalability.
Two former SpaceX engineers are turning their focus from the stars to the grid, pitching a terrestrial energy solution designed to power the surging demands of artificial intelligence. Their startup, Ambrosia Energy, has emerged from stealth with a bold proposition: build large-scale power plants on Earth that are cheaper and faster to deploy than traditional natural gas facilities.
Rather than inventing a new technology, Ambrosia is strategically pairing solar panels with lithium-ion batteries to deliver continuous electricity at a cost of roughly $100 per megawatt-hour. The company’s co-founder and president, Sara Spangelo, told TechCrunch that a power plant should be operational within 12 months of signing a contract, regardless of scale. “Our ambition is to go to gigawatt scale,” she said.
To drive down costs, the startup rethought the battery design. Most grid-scale batteries discharge in two to four hours, which stresses the system. Ambrosia instead uses a slower trickle charge during the day and a gradual release at night. This approach, combined with other engineering tweaks, has pushed the total system cost to just 1.5 times the price of the battery cells alone, well below industry norms.
If Ambrosia can deliver at scale, it could disrupt the energy sector. Lazard estimates that building and operating a new combined cycle gas turbine costs around $107 per megawatt-hour, and new gas turbines face a five to seven year backlog. “We’re also way more reliable than gas,” Spangelo added.
Spangelo and CEO Ben Longmier previously worked on Starlink at SpaceX, after their IoT startup Swarm was acquired. Swarm used dozens of tiny satellites to create a low-power, low-bandwidth network. Spangelo also spent time at Google, while Longmier worked at Apple and several space startups. The duo initially self-funded Ambrosia, but the company recently received an investment from DFJ Growth. Spangelo declined to disclose the amount.
She sees clear parallels between Ambrosia and SpaceX. “A lot of these challenges are very similar across regulatory, technical, go-to-market. If we can bring some of that experience to this, hopefully we can have an impact,” she explained. Building the power plant modules, she noted, has felt “kind of like deploying a satellite constellation. You launch four, you learn, you iterate.”
To prove the concept, Ambrosia started constructing a power plant in West Texas in January, just one month after incorporating. “After this week, we’ll be almost halfway complete with that power plant,” Longmier said. Some sections were turned on six weeks ago and have been running at full capacity since. “Our system is basically infinitely scalable,” Spangelo noted, allowing customers to test smaller setups before committing to larger ones.
The potential scale is enormous. “We have a couple of partners where there’s access to like a million acres,” Longmier said. Based on solar land requirements, that could support a power plant of up to 30 gigawatts. For now, Ambrosia is starting with projects in the 20 to 30 megawatt range. Many components are currently off-the-shelf, but the company plans to gradually replace them with custom designs. It also intends to build a factory in Austin, Texas to accelerate larger projects. “We’re pretty ambitious,” Spangelo said, targeting “gigawatts by the end of the decade.”
(Source: TechCrunch)
