Antora Energy raises $550M to expand thermal battery production as data center power demands surge

Antora Energy just closed a $550 million Series C round, valuing the thermal battery maker at roughly $2.47 billion. The Sunnyvale, California company plans to use the capital to scale manufacturing of modular thermal batteries designed for two of the hungriest energy consumers on the planet: heavy industry and data centers. What Antora actually builds Antora’s technology works by taking cheap renewable electricity, the kind that’s abundant when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and using it to heat solid carbon blocks to extreme temperatures. Those superheated blocks then release energy on demand as usable heat and power. This matters for data centers specifically because they require uninterrupted power, the kind of always-on reliability that intermittent renewables alone can’t provide. As AI workloads push facility power requirements into unprecedented territory, thermal storage offers a path to decarbonization that doesn’t sacrifice uptime. The money trail and what it signals The Series C closed on July 20, 2026. The company had previously raised over $230 million in total funding, including a $150 million Series B in February 2024 that was led by Decarbonization Partn...