Energy Storage Firm Gets $100 Million in Funding

Energy Vault Inc., a company that makes an energy storage system, has announced it received $100 million in a Series C funding round.The Westlake Village startup said it would use the money to deploy its EVx energy storage platform in markets in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. The U.S. rollout is expected to begin later this year with the global ramp up through next year, the company said in a release.The company has raised a total of $217 million from investors.The company’s EVx energy storage platform is based on a 400-foot high crane that lifts 35-ton bricks using surplus energy from wind and solar farms, typically during the day. When energy is needed the crane drops the bricks and the energy from the dropping bricks creates electricity.The funding round includes existing investors Prime Movers Lab in Jackson, Wyo.; SoftBank Vision Fund in Tokyo; Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; Helena in Los Angeles and Idealab X in Pasadena as well as new investors including Pickering Energy Ventures in Houston; SailingStone Global Energy Transition in San Francisco; A.T. Gekko in Pittsburgh and Green Storage Solutions Venture I LLC in Chapel Hill, N.C.Robert Piconi, chief executive of Energy Vault, said the company was happy to welcome Prime Movers Lab and other new and existing investors as the world is at a critical inflection point in the shift toward adoption of renewable energy sources.“Energy Vault is accelerating this transformation as we now move to global deployments and market adoption of the technology to help energy providers and industrial customers more cost-effectively meet their sustainability and decarbonization goals,” Piconi said in a statement.