Antora raises $550 million for U.S.-made thermal battery storage

Antora Energy, a US company that makes thermal batteries, has raised $550 million in new funding. These batteries store electricity as heat inside insulated blocks of solid carbon, then release it later as power or heat for industrial use. The money came from a mix of new and existing investors, including Salesforce Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Lowercarbon Capital, among others.

The funding follows a recent project in South Dakota, where Antora installed more than 200 thermal batteries at a bioprocessing plant, delivering 50 megawatts of power and 5 gigawatt-hours of storage. The company built and got that project running in under a year. Antora makes its batteries at a factory in San Jose, California, which it recently expanded with two new facilities, doubling how much it can produce. With this new funding, the company plans to build a second US manufacturing site and roll out more projects at a faster pace.

This is industrial-scale energy storage technology aimed at factories, data centers, and large facilities rather than individual houses. There is no home product or rebate tied to this news. Still, it points to growing US investment in storing energy for later use, which could shape how power grids handle demand in the years ahead, including in areas where homeowners rely on the same regional grid for electricity.