Antora Energy raises $550 million Series C for thermal battery scale-up

Antora Energy has raised $550 million in a Series C funding round from new and existing investors, pv magazine USA reported. The round was co-led by G2 Venture Partners and Eclipse, with new participation including Ribbit Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Activate Capital, John Doerr, Westly Group, StepStone Group, and Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, plus existing backers including Decarbonization Partners, Impact Science Ventures, Trust Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Lowercarbon Capital. The announcement follows deployment of a 50 MW/5GWh thermal battery project in South Dakota, where Antora said it installed over 200 thermal batteries at POET's Big Stone City bioprocessing facility and moved from initial construction to commissioning in under 12 months. Antora's batteries store electricity as heat in insulated solid carbon blocks and are built at a San Jose, California factory that the company said expanded in spring 2026, doubling manufacturing capacity. Funds will support faster project deployment and a second U.S. manufacturing facility, according to Nehali Jain, Antora's VP of strategy and growth. Co-founder and CEO Andrew Ponec said energy is a bottleneck from factories to data centers and that the round continues investment in U.S. manufacturing.