The Exchanges

Q And you just closed literally a billion dollars in new financing, which I think brings your total over time to 1.3 billion. What is that money going to go to? What products do you provide? What services? Like what, what are you currently doing?

A Yeah. So the capital really is going to accelerate our vertical integration, which allows us to ultimately lower costs for consumers. So our strategy at the highest level is to develop a compounding cost advantage through vertical integration. So we design batteries, we make them like literally manufacture them, we install them, own them, operate them, and we sell power directly to a homeowner. So to answer your second question specifically, when you sign up with base, we become your electricity provider. So today we're only available in Texas where now we, we sell power to Deregulated customers who can choose their electricity provider, and then we do sell our technology to the regulated utilities in Texas, and then they offer our services to their customers. So when you sign up with base, we install our battery on your home. When the grid's up and running, we use that battery to serve the grid. When the grid goes down, you get that battery to back up your home, and we're able to save our customers on the order of 10 to 20% a month on their electricity. So as we invest further, as we build new generations of the technology, our costs will go down, our returns will go up, we'll be able to Share those returns, so to speak, with the customer in the form of lower and lower prices, driving the price of, of the Electron down, driving the availability or the reliability of the Electr…

AI assessment note: “So the capital really is going to accelerate our vertical integration”

Q That sounds like an amazing mix. Are there specific areas that you're hiring for right now or looking for key talent in?

A Yeah. So as part of our announcement, kind of the big theme here is join the charge, right? It's a call to action to the most talented engineers, operators, and creatives in the world to come join us on what we think is the most interesting, exciting, and important mission out there in technology right now. And so we're really hiring across all teams, software, hardware, finance, go to market, business development. Regulatory policy, uh, deployments engineering, manufacturing engineering, you know, specifically some areas where we're really focused right now are firmware, power electronics, uh, mechanical engineering, you know, design engineering, uh, so all kinds of software engineering, basically everything from, you know, very low level firmware to, you know, front end to back end and cloud engineering and everything in between. So, um, you know, right, right now, as you, as you noted, you know, we've, we've raised, uh, you know, 1.3 billion in the last 18 or so months. We've got more demand than we can serve. We're standing up our first factory in Austin to produce our product at, at really large scale. And really the constraint is great talent. Um, and so, you know, we want to put the word out there that we're open for business and we, we want to bring, uh, more great people down to Austin to join our team.

AI assessment note: “specifically some areas where we're really focused right now are firmware, power electronics”

Q Um, A, do you think those projections are correct? And B, how do you think about how we solve for that?

A I do think directionally the demand projections are correct, and I, and I think that, or, or actually, uh, potentially understated. Uh, I think there's a massive amount of electricity demanded coming. Uh, now how do we serve it is the question. You'll hear people talk all the time about, oh, we're running out of energy. We have no energy. That's not really true. We're not using the energy that we have in the most effective way possible. Uh, and you know, another way to think about it is, you know, the U S grid kind of max peak is somewhere on the order of 700 gigawatts, but average Average demand across the country is closer to like, 300 gigawatts, right? So we've got another three, 400 gigawatts, uh, you know, just up to 700 gigawatts if you believe that, you know, that peak is going to grow to a terawatt of latent capacity. And, you know, the way to access that capacity is by time shifting electricity, right? Using batteries and software. And so, you know, we think that our technology layer is going to unlock a bunch of latent capacity on the grid, help us meet that demand, but we will also have to build more generation, right? And there's tons of Smart people and interesting companies that are working on.

AI assessment note: “I do think directionally the demand projections are correct”

Q and, um, one of the things that really stood out to me is the energy that you feel is, no pun intended, as you sort of walk around, everybody seems very motivated, very driven, very on it, and it's kind of like a buzzy space and culture. How do you guys, was that purposeful? Did that just happen through the people that you hire? Like how did you approach that?

A A bit of both. I think culture largely is, is the people that you hire and those people define kind of the early culture. And then you can, it's a bit of nature and nurture, right? You can kind of tend to the culture and, and, and make sure it, it gets better and moves in the direction you want it. And so I'd say, you know, the things that we really value as part of our culture, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is working with urgency and focus, right? And I think it's really easy to have It's like, yeah, we do nine nine six. We probably do more than nine nine six, but we don't really talk about it in that way. And it's like, just kind of natural to how we operate, but we have an extreme focus and we ruthlessly prioritize the most important things. Everyone at the company knows what the North stars of business are. They know how the thing they're working on ladders up to the North stars. We talk about our business very openly. So, you know, as you've seen, team has lunch and dinner together. Lunch, dinner, table conversations are really about like our long-term vision. Where are we going? What kind of new things should we be thinking about? Um, and you know, you walk around the office and the place looks like a Best Buy because there's just TVs everywhere as you've seen, right? Metrics everywhere. All the stuff that matters at the company is visible for everyone to …

AI assessment note: “A bit of both. I think culture largely is, is the people that you hire”

Q Like what's lacking today, or what technology is most promising, or what do you think are the most interesting shifts happening? Yeah, I mean, talk in my book a little bit.

A I think batteries are the key. Batteries are the unlock to the energy transition, and will continue to drive out cost, uh, both the hard cost and the soft cost, right? I mean, you have the cells, and the modules, and the power electronics, and, uh, the bus bars, and the current collectors, and all the things that go into a battery, but then you have the EPC, you know, getting the battery in the ground, the logistics, the transportation, Uh, all the software that goes on top of it, um, monetizing these assets, and there's costs to attack in all parts of the stack. Um, and so I think that, um, battery storage will be, uh, will define the next chapter of the energy transition. And I'm, I'm super hopeful that new kinds of generation will break through as super economic. And I hope that breakthroughs happen in nuclear and, you know, there's some interesting companies working on geothermal and hydroelectric. And I think that has a lot of promise, but, you know, as we discussed, energy is a geographically defined problem. You know, parts of the Pacific Northwest and in Canada where there's tons of hydro, it makes a ton of sense to, to use that as a generation type. And, you know, in Texas, you don't have a lot of that, but you do have a bunch of wind and a bunch of solar. And so I think it'll look a little different in different parts of the world, but really, ah, you know, another wa…

AI assessment note: “I think batteries are the key. Batteries are the unlock to the energy transition”

Q What do you think are the regulations that are most prohibitive in terms of our energy future? So if you were able to remove two or three regulations, what would they be?

A Yeah. I think, uh, we gotta make it way easier to permit building energy technology. We need, you know, we talked about demand going up. We need more supply, right? Well, what's holding back supply? A lot of it is permanent. It's like interconnection queues need to go be, be shorter. Permits need to go faster. That, that I think is one of the biggest things. And then the broader point I'd make is exposure to price signals, right? Like more competition. Um, you know, markets are reasonably efficient and giving market participants access to price signals such that they can, you know, monetize flexibility. And really what I mean by that is if you're able to move when you consume power around when power is available, you should be compensated for that. Right. And, and that's not really the way the industry works today. And I think it, it, it, it hopefully will move in that direction.

AI assessment note: “we gotta make it way easier to permit building energy technology”