Energy storage funding tracker (280 deals)

Our funding tracker covering the energy storage market

Below is the table listing all the deals. You may find our methodology at the end of this page.

And, if you want to gain a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the energy storage market.

Is energy storage really attracting billions, or are a few giant rounds inflating the market?

Energy storage is a genuinely well-funded market, but a handful of exceptionally large financings make its $12.71 billion total look much bigger than the market most startups actually experience.

Across the 280 deals we tracked from January 2024 to mid-September 2026, the median disclosed financing was $11.15 million, while the average reached $50.66 million. That is a huge difference for companies looking at what they might realistically raise.

Strip out rounds above $100 million, and recorded funding falls to approximately $3.80 billion. Remove rounds above $50 million, and only $2.54 billion remains.

Those smaller deals still represent substantial investment activity. They cover businesses developing battery materials, new storage chemistries, manufacturing processes, software and deployment systems. But the headline total is largely shaped by companies building factories or expanding physical energy storage networks.

There are two financing environments operating side by side. Many startups raise a few million to develop and validate their technology, while a much smaller group can raise hundreds of millions to manufacture and deploy it.

How many energy storage startups are actually getting funded?

The energy storage market is much broader than its biggest funding announcements suggest, with 245 different companies receiving financing during the period we studied.

We counted 280 deals, but 212 companies appeared only once. Another 32 completed two rounds, and Base Power alone completed four.

That leaves just 33 companies, or 13.5% of the funded population, raising money more than once during the window. Yet those repeat fundraisers received approximately $6.21 billion, close to half the market's recorded capital.

There is a useful distinction here. A startup appearing once may have already raised several rounds before our research window, or it may still be working with the money it received. We cannot treat every single-round company as one that failed to attract more investment.

Still, the numbers show a large population of funded energy storage companies alongside a much smaller group that repeatedly attracts capital.

Who is getting most of the energy storage funding?

Energy storage funding is heavily concentrated in ten companies, which together received approximately 58% of all the capital recorded in our research.

Base Power leads with $2.26 billion across four financings, followed by Form Energy with $1.155 billion and Antora Energy with $700 million. Those three alone account for more than $4.1 billion.

Their businesses could hardly be more different. Base Power installs and operates residential battery systems. Form Energy is developing multi-day iron-air batteries for the electricity grid. Antora Energy manufactures thermal batteries designed to supply industrial heat and electricity.

The same pattern extends further down the ranking. Group14 Technologies and Sila develop advanced battery materials, while Eelpower and Fidra Energy focus on large-scale storage infrastructure.

Investors are clearly willing to put serious money into different parts of energy storage, provided a company has a credible route toward large-scale manufacturing or deployment.

Company	Recorded deals	Capital raised
Base Power	4	$2,260M
Form Energy	2	$1,155M
Antora Energy	2	$700M
Eelpower	1	$675M
EnerVenue	2	$608.1M
Fidra Energy	1	$601M
Group14 Technologies	1	$463M
Sila	1	$375M
Return	1	$348M
Lunar Energy	2	$232M

What can a normal energy storage startup realistically raise?

A typical energy storage startup can expect funding in the low millions at Seed stage, with considerably larger checks becoming possible once the company has reached Series A or Series B.

The median Seed round in our research was $3.15 million. That increases to $15 million at Series A and $33.9 million at Series B.

A Seed round might support laboratory work, engineering hires or an initial pilot. By Series B, investors are often financing a company with a more established product and a clearer path toward commercial production.

Across all stages, the median disclosed round was $11.15 million. At the company level, 96 businesses, representing 39.2% of the funded population, received no more than $5 million in cumulative financing during our observation window.

Only 36 companies raised more than $50 million in total.

Energy storage has an active early-stage financing market. But access to $50 million or $100 million is still reserved for a relatively small group, regardless of how promising the underlying technology looks.

Why are some energy storage companies raising $500 million or even $1 billion?

The biggest energy storage rounds are financing industrial expansion: factories, production equipment, supply chains and battery installations that cost far more than ordinary product development.

Form Energy's $750 million Series G, announced in August 2026, is a clear example. The financing was led by T. Rowe Price and was intended to expand iron-air battery manufacturing at the company's Weirton, West Virginia facility and accelerate commercial deployment.

Form Energy had announced an approximately 80 GWh project backlog, including a proposed 30 GWh project involving Xcel Energy and Google's data center plans, an agreement to supply 12 GWh of batteries to Crusoe, and a project with FuturEnergy Ireland.

Base Power's $1 billion Series D, announced earlier that August, tells a similar story from a different angle. The Austin company had introduced its Base Core home battery, available in 39.2 kWh and 78.4 kWh configurations, and was expanding manufacturing and installation capacity.

Group14 Technologies offers a third example. Its $463 million Series D, announced in August 2025, came alongside the acquisition of full ownership of its South Korean battery-materials factory. By March 2026, the company reported that the facility was ramping production toward a design capacity of 2,000 metric tons of silicon battery material annually.

These are expensive businesses to build. The US Department of Energy reinforced this point in July 2026 when it launched the Storage Design STEP Prize, explicitly targeting manufacturing and supply-chain obstacles that stop promising storage technologies from reaching production.

For the largest energy storage startups, attracting investment increasingly depends on whether they can manufacture and deliver their technology at a commercially useful scale.

Is lithium-ion still getting most of the energy storage investment?

Lithium-ion remains the dominant category in energy storage funding, receiving $8.73 billion, or 68.7% of all recorded capital.

We identified 164 lithium-ion-related financings across 145 companies. That represents considerably more activity than any other technology category.

Yet the lithium-ion group covers several very different businesses.

Sila is developing silicon-based anode materials and received $375 million in 2024. Group14 raised $463 million to expand silicon battery-materials production. Base Power represents the deployment side of the market, installing residential batteries that can also support electricity-grid operations.

The category also includes battery analytics companies such as ACCURE Battery Intelligence and manufacturing-technology developers such as 24M Technologies.

So lithium-ion's lead reflects investment throughout an established battery value chain, from materials and manufacturing to software and customer installations.

Long-duration and thermal storage have attracted some very large rounds, but lithium-ion currently has the combination that matters most: the broadest funded-company population and the largest pool of capital.

Energy storage category	Deals	Companies	Reported capital	Share of capital
Lithium-Ion Batteries	164	145	$8.73B	68.7%
Metal-Air & Long-Duration	15	13	$1.96B	15.4%
Thermal energy storage	32	25	$1.08B	8.5%
Compressed Air & Mechanical	7	7	$389.7M	3.1%
Sodium-Ion Batteries	30	25	$254.0M	2.0%
Flow Batteries	21	20	$220.2M	1.7%
Hydrogen energy storage	9	8	$71.1M	0.6%
Pumped Hydro Storage	2	2	$8.9M	0.1%

Why are long-duration batteries attracting such big investments?

Long-duration energy storage is attracting some of the market's largest checks because a few companies are getting ready to manufacture batteries for large electricity-grid projects.

The category generated approximately $1.96 billion from just 15 deals. That is 15.4% of all recorded energy storage funding from only 5.4% of transactions.

Form Energy and EnerVenue account for a substantial majority of that amount.

Form Energy's iron-air batteries are designed to deliver electricity over multiple days. Its technology addresses a different problem from batteries designed primarily for short-duration balancing or household backup: maintaining electricity supply through prolonged periods when generation is insufficient.

This helps explain the size of Form Energy's recent financing. Manufacturing iron-air batteries and supplying tens of gigawatt-hours to customers involves much greater capital requirements than demonstrating a working prototype.

According to the US Department of Energy's August 2024 report on low-cost long-duration energy storage, manufacturing costs and the overall cost of delivered electricity remain major obstacles for technologies including flow batteries, sodium batteries, compressed-air systems and thermal storage.

Long-duration storage has attracted unusually strong financing at the top, but calling the whole category well-funded would be a stretch. A few companies are responsible for most of its recorded dollars.

Is thermal energy storage becoming a serious alternative to batteries?

Thermal energy storage has become a meaningful funding category, with $1.08 billion raised across 32 deals involving 25 companies.

The largest contribution came from Antora Energy, whose $550 million Series C in July 2026 accounted for roughly half the category's total.

Antora's technology stores electricity as heat in solid carbon and delivers energy to industrial customers as heat or electricity. That opens applications in manufacturing and energy-intensive facilities where conventional electrical batteries may be less suitable.

The company's financing was co-led by G2 Venture Partners and Eclipse. Antora said the money would support production expansion and large-scale project deployment, including opportunities involving industrial facilities, data centers and the grid.

Earlier financing also shows how the company reached this point. Antora raised $150 million in 2024 to accelerate production of its modular thermal batteries, before returning for the much larger Series C.

The remaining thermal-storage financings total approximately $530 million. That is still a meaningful amount, but it gives a better picture of how unevenly investment is spread across the category.

Thermal storage has attracted serious industrial investors. Whether more companies can follow Antora into nine-figure financings remains an open question.

Are sodium-ion and flow batteries struggling to attract investors?

Sodium-ion and flow battery startups are getting funded, but their financing rounds are much smaller than those going to the market's leading lithium-ion and long-duration companies.

Sodium-ion recorded 30 financings across 25 companies, representing approximately $254 million. Flow batteries recorded 21 deals across 20 companies, attracting $220.2 million.

Combined, the two categories received around $474 million from 51 transactions. Antora Energy alone raised more than that in its latest Series C.

Both technologies have credible reasons to exist. Sodium-ion batteries can reduce reliance on certain materials used in lithium-ion cells, while flow batteries can offer useful characteristics for stationary storage, including long operating lives and flexible energy capacity.

However, the US Department of Energy's storage technology assessments show that cost, manufacturing scale and the maturity of supply chains remain important challenges for alternative technologies.

There is also a reporting problem with the comparison. China contributed 41 energy storage deals to our research, but only 13 disclosed usable numeric financing amounts. That missing information affects our ability to measure investment in technologies with substantial Chinese participation.

For now, sodium-ion and flow batteries have established a respectable funded-company population. Their much smaller recorded capital totals suggest fewer businesses have reached the scale of the market's biggest industrial financings.

How old are energy storage companies before investors write really big checks?

Energy storage companies generally need several years of development before attracting the largest investments. In our research, businesses raising more than $50 million had a median age of six years, compared with three years for those raising less than $5 million.

The age difference becomes even clearer by funding stage.

Seed-stage companies had a median age of two years. That increased to four years at Series A, six at Series B, eight at Series C and ten at Series D+.

Battery manufacturers must establish technical performance, safety, manufacturing processes and product reliability. Storage developers may need project agreements, suitable sites and commercial partners. All of that takes time.

Group14, for example, spent years developing silicon battery materials before expanding into large-scale manufacturing in South Korea. Form Energy similarly moved through laboratory development, manufacturing preparation and customer agreements before raising its $750 million Series G.

There are exceptions, especially among software-oriented or deployment-focused businesses. Nevertheless, the funding pattern points strongly toward maturity becoming more important as check sizes increase.

Why do so few energy storage startups make it to Series C?

Series C funding is remarkably scarce in the energy storage deals we studied, with only ten recorded transactions compared with 70 Series A rounds.

The broader financing ladder shows the same narrowing. We counted 96 Seed financings, 70 Series A, 29 Series B, ten Series C and eleven Series D+ rounds.

And the required checks get substantially bigger along the way. The median Series A financing was $15 million, followed by $33.9 million at Series B, $69 million at Series C and $102 million at Series D+.

That creates a demanding transition. A company might prove that its battery technology works and still face a much harder challenge raising the capital needed to manufacture it competitively.

The stage counts do not tell us how many startups fail. Companies raising Seed rounds near the end of the research period have not necessarily had time to reach Series C. Meanwhile, some mature businesses enter the dataset only when they complete a later round.

But the lack of intermediate and later-stage transactions is hard to miss. Energy storage attracts many early-stage financings while relatively few companies appear in the much more expensive stages of commercial expansion.

Funding stage	Deals	Reported capital	Median round	Median company age
Seed	96	$349.7M	$3.15M	2 years
Series A	70	$1.22B	$15M	4 years
Series B	29	$1.46B	$33.9M	6 years
Series C	10	$2.05B	$69M	8 years
Series D+	11	$3.43B	$102M	10 years
Growth Equity	17	$2.07B	$42M	6.5 years
Unknown	47	$2.13B	$13.65M	5 years

Are investors still backing new energy storage companies?

New energy storage businesses are still attracting money, but investors are putting far more capital into companies that have already raised financing.

We identified 76 first financings worth approximately $1.22 billion. Follow-on financings accounted for another 203 transactions and $11.50 billion.

That means previously financed businesses received roughly 90% of the market's recorded capital.

Median financing size also differs sharply. First rounds had a median value of approximately $3.15 million, while follow-on rounds reached $16 million.

New companies can obtain the capital needed to start developing or testing a product, while established businesses raise much larger amounts to expand operations.

Still, first-time financing represented more than a quarter of all deal activity. Investors are clearly continuing to back new entrants, even as the largest commitments go to companies with longer financing histories.

Is energy storage investment growing steadily, or does funding come in sudden bursts?

Energy storage companies raise money fairly regularly, but the monthly funding totals can jump dramatically when one or two major transactions close.

Across the 32 complete months we analyzed, there were an average of 8.6 deals each month, with a median of eight.

Capital was far less consistent. Average disclosed monthly funding reached approximately $395 million, compared with a median of only $178 million.

August 2026 provides the clearest example. It recorded eight transactions, a fairly ordinary month by deal count, but approximately $1.84 billion in financing. Base Power's $1 billion Series D and Form Energy's $750 million Series G accounted for almost the entire amount.

September 2025 had the highest transaction count, with 15 deals, yet did not produce the largest capital total.

Deal activity is relatively steady. Funding dollars are not. One giant financing can turn an otherwise ordinary month into a record-breaking one.

A large increase in reported capital therefore does not necessarily mean more energy storage businesses are obtaining investment.

Is Europe or the US winning the energy storage funding race?

Europe has more funded energy storage companies, but the United States is where most of the very large financing rounds happen.

European businesses completed 117 deals across 101 companies, compared with 87 deals across 74 companies in North America.

Yet North America attracted approximately $7.88 billion, accounting for 62% of reported capital. Europe received $4.05 billion, or 31.8%.

The United States alone contributed around $7.76 billion, helped by financings at Base Power, Form Energy, Antora Energy, Group14 Technologies and Sila.

The United Kingdom followed with roughly $1.80 billion. Major transactions included financing commitments associated with Eelpower and Fidra Energy, whose structures differ somewhat from conventional venture equity rounds.

Asia-Pacific recorded 76 deals involving 70 companies but only $786.9 million in disclosed capital.

Those figures put North America comfortably ahead on recorded funding, although incomplete transaction disclosure in China makes the regional comparison less precise than the headline percentages suggest.

For now, Europe's advantage is the breadth of companies receiving investment, while the US leads by a wide margin in large disclosed equity financings.

Which investors keep showing up in energy storage funding rounds?

Energy storage has a surprisingly fragmented group of lead investors, with relatively few firms repeatedly appearing in the financings we tracked.

Lead-investor information was available for 199 transactions. After separating named co-leads, we identified approximately 245 distinct investors, but only 24 names appeared in more than one deal.

EIT InnoEnergy was the most frequent disclosed leader, appearing in four transactions with a combined round value of $24.3 million.

Addition appeared in three financings totaling approximately $2.20 billion, while T. Rowe Price and Valor Equity Partners each appeared twice in rounds worth more than $1 billion combined.

These investors are playing quite different roles. EIT InnoEnergy and High-Tech Gründerfonds appear more often in smaller early-stage financings. Addition, Valor Equity Partners and T. Rowe Price have participated in much larger transactions involving companies such as Base Power and Form Energy.

We should also distinguish the full size of a financing from the amount contributed by its lead investor. A firm leading a $1 billion round has not necessarily invested $1 billion itself.

Energy storage funding involves many investors, but relatively few repeatedly lead transactions within the same observation window.

Are big energy companies and automakers investing in energy storage startups?

Corporate investors are actively participating in energy storage funding, particularly in battery businesses that could support their manufacturing operations, supply chains or future products.

We identified approximately 73 deals with named strategic investors, representing around 26% of transactions. Another 17 records indicated strategic participation without identifying the investor reliably.

The financing amounts are noticeably different. Deals with identified strategic participation had a median value of approximately $17.25 million, compared with $8.1 million among deals without identified strategic investors.

Recurring names included Samsung Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, GM Ventures and LG Technology Ventures.

The reasons for investing vary. Automakers have a direct interest in advanced battery materials and manufacturing. Energy companies may see storage as a way to support grid operations or expand electricity-related services. Industrial groups can also benefit from access to more efficient manufacturing technologies.

Group14's $463 million financing, led by SK with participation from Porsche Investments and other investors, shows how battery-materials companies can attract strategic capital connected to future production.

Similarly, 24M Technologies' 2024 financing involved industrial participants including Kyocera, Asahi Kasei and Dai Nippon Printing.

The larger median financing associated with strategic participation is interesting, although it does not prove that corporate involvement causes bigger rounds. Industrial investors may simply prefer businesses that are already further along in development.

What is the biggest weakness in energy storage funding right now?

The biggest weakness in energy storage funding is the limited number of companies obtaining the large intermediate and late-stage rounds needed to turn promising technology into a scaled business.

The market has plenty of early-stage activity. Seed and Series A together accounted for 166 financings, while categories such as sodium-ion, flow batteries and thermal storage contain meaningful groups of funded companies.

But the later-stage population is much thinner, and the largest capital commitments are concentrated in a handful of established businesses.

There is also a commercial question that financing announcements cannot settle.

A company raising $300 million to build a factory has achieved something significant, but we still need to know whether that factory can produce at the expected cost, whether customer demand materializes and whether the business can generate sufficient returns.

This concern is especially relevant for industrial storage developers. Large projects can depend on customer contracts, electricity-market conditions, financing availability and construction timelines.

And because some recorded transactions include announced commitments rather than fully drawn cash, headline funding totals can overstate the amount immediately available for spending.

We can clearly see which companies have persuaded investors to fund expansion. What we cannot yet establish from financing records alone is how many will turn those investments into durable, profitable businesses.

What should we actually take away from the energy storage funding data?

Energy storage has a broad startup ecosystem, but a relatively small group of companies controls most of the financing. The market's $12.71 billion headline total is real as a measure of reported financing activity, though it combines conventional rounds with certain equity commitments and should not be read as fully disbursed cash.

For most founders, financing remains much smaller than the biggest industry announcements suggest. Seed rounds are generally measured in low single-digit millions, and the median deal across stages sits near $11 million.

Lithium-ion remains the dominant investment category, supported by a wide range of battery-materials, manufacturing and deployment companies. Long-duration and thermal storage have also attracted very large amounts, largely through a few businesses that have advanced toward industrial-scale production.

The biggest change in financing requirements comes as companies move toward commercialization. Investors can support technical development with relatively modest checks, but factories, manufacturing lines and deployed storage systems require much more capital.

The US is currently the center of the largest disclosed financings, while Europe has a broader population of funded businesses. Strategic investors also play a meaningful role, especially where energy storage overlaps with established industrial supply chains.

The most difficult part of the market remains the journey from a working technology to a scalable business. Our research shows plenty of companies getting started, fewer securing later-stage financing, and only a small group attracting the extraordinary sums needed for large-scale manufacturing and deployment.