San Francisco-based startup TeraWatt announced an eye-popping $1 billion raise on Tuesday, putting it among the largest venture rounds in the Bay Area this year.
The company is building out charging infrastructure for industrial fleets of electric vehicles, and the funding round comes nearly one month after President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law.
That law allocated an historic amount of funding for climate change mitigation efforts, including $369 billion that's earmarked for subsidies, investments and tax incentives related to renewable energy.
TeraWatt previously raised $100 million in a seed round led by Keyframe Capital and Cyrus Capital, and in a press release the company said that its investors also include Vision Ridge Partners.
Its latest funding was reported as a Series A round by TechCrunch. I asked the company to confirm if it considered the round a Series A, but in an emailed response it described the funding as an "injection of capital" that brings its total funding to more than $1 billion. It also confirmed to Bay Area Inno that the latest funding was all equity.
The company currently has 25 employees, which CEO Neha Palmer wants to double over the next year, and it owns sites in 18 states to build its charging network.
"TeraWatt’s advantage is not only our property portfolio — targeted specifically to locations suitable for EV charging, which we have been growing over four years now — but also our deep customer relationships and team with extensive experience in real estate, site development, energy and operations. These attributes, coupled with the access to the very significant capital we’ve now received from likeminded investors, gives us a unique advantage in the ability to provide a comprehensive solution for EV fleets," Palmer told me via an emailed statement.
TeraWatt was founded in 2018 by Benjamin Birnbaum, John Rapaport and Ethan Goldsmith, according to PitchBook.
It is building a full stack solution, according to Fast Company, in which it will manage a network of charging hubs that also provides solar energy and storage, and takes into account fluctuating demands on the electrical grid.
“We’re hearing that it will take a trillion dollars of investment into energy charging by 2040,” Palmer told Fast Company.
Electric vehicle companies have raised more than $9 billion globally this year, according to Crunchbase, and TeraWatt's funding makes up a large portion of that.
The industry is on track to raise less than it did in 2021, when total funding exceeded $20 billion, according to Crunchbase data, led by Rivian which raised more than $5 billion across two rounds.
TeraWatt's raise is among the biggest of the year, but it doesn't quite reach the top spot.
This year, Redwood City-based Altos Labs announced $3 billion Series A in January. The biotech company is developing ways to "reverse disease."
Alphabet-backed health company Verily raised $1 billion at the beginning of September, and GM-backed Cruise raised $1.35 billion in February.
