By Naureen S. Malik | Updated on Oct 08, 2026 at 10:00 AM
A group of investors including global commodity trader Vitol SA is placing a nearly quarter billion dollar bet on a power technology company that scales shifts in energy usage so data centers can connect to grids sooner.
Power grids are facing increasing strain from data center demand growth and extreme weather, and pressure from consumers over soaring electricity costs. San Francisco-based Voltus Inc. believes it can make grids more efficient by drawing greater energy from existing infrastructure and has now raised $225 million in a series D financing round, Chief Executive Officer Dana Guernsey said in an interview.
The company provides flexibility on electrical grids by paying businesses and households to shift energy usage to ease overall demand stress. It can also shift demand from data centers during extreme weather events. Voltus plans to more than double its pool of flexible energy to 20 gigawatts by 2030 from about 8.5 gigawatts today by tapping into batteries, cooling systems and other equipment across thousands of businesses and homes, Voltus said in a statement.
“We have been thrust from something that was fringe to something front and center that is needed,” Guernsey said. “We are really short on capacity and in many ways we are not short on energy. We are short on energy at the right time.”
The financing was led by sustainability investor Generation Investment Management LLP, co-founded by former US Vice-President Al Gore, along with Vitol and Activate Capital Ltd., Voltus said. Broadscale Group LLC, Climate Investment Funds, NGP Energy Capital Management LLC, Ajax Strategies LLC and All Aboard Funding Ltd. also participated in the round.
“Economic success is dependent upon a resilient power system, enabled by companies such as Voltus,” R. Andrew de Pass, head of energy transition investments at Vitol, said in the statement. “The demands of weather events and data centers require our power system to be smarter and more efficient.”
Voltus’s aim is to use the financing to boost its ability to provide data centers with their own capacity, something increasingly demanded by grid operators, utilities and regulators, Guernsey said.
Dave Easton, growth equity partner at Generation Investment Management, said in an interview what Voltus is doing is a “niche solution,” but the value of any added supply has increased amid the data center boom. “Demand response megawatts are the fastest, the cheapest, the cleanest you can possibly get.”