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AIPROPX ReportFortune · 2h ago
Michael Dell’s son built a $13 billion home battery business—and he’s going on 30 years old
Zach Dell’s goal is to install a Base Power home battery system in every backyard in America—and in Europe and beyond for that matter—so it’s fair to say there’s a lot of room for growth.
The son of legendary Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell, Zach has already made a name for himself in his own right. Just weeks before turning 30 later this month, his company Base, which Dell co-founded in 2023, has raised another $1 billion in a Series D funding round. The new round revealed that Base’s valuation has spiked to $13 billion from $4 billion in less than a year.
“We want to bring Base to every neighborhood in America over time,” Zach Dell told Fortune , noting that the residential retail electricity market in the U.S. is about $200 billion. “The scale of the opportunity is just massive and, of course, we do have global ambitions. We think markets like the U.K., Germany, Australia, and potentially others are attractive as well.”
The three-year-old company has gone from installing one battery system daily to over 100 per day—more than 30,000 total customers and rapidly rising. Earlier this year, Base opened its own battery manufacturing plant, Base Factory 1, in Austin, Texas, and a much larger second factory is under construction and slated for completion in 2027.
Austin-based Base started out in its home state of Texas and recently expanded to Illinois. The plan is to expand to additional states next year, either working in deregulated electricity markets or partnering with monopoly utilities.
Base’s business model is focused on offering a one-stop shop for the home: electricity and backup power courtesy of a battery storage system, not a standard gas generator. Instead of paying for a backup power system that can easily cost $15,000 or much more, Base offers electricity services and charges an installation fee—no more than $695—and a flat monthly membership fee of $19—call it the Costco model. Dell argues overall electricity charges are typically cheaper on average because of the money saved by the batteries giving power back to the grid.
And, when there’s a power outage, the battery (or the upcharge for a dual-battery system) keeps the lights on—so long as it isn’t a prolonged outage beyond two or three days.
“Our business model, which is very unique, is that we’re really an infrastructure company,” Dell said. “We own and operate the assets in the wholesale power markets. That’s really where we make our money, not by trying to sell the consumer something at a really high-margin upfront cost.”
The Series D round featured four co-leads in fundraising: Ribbit Capital, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, and JP Morgan Chase’s Strategic Investment Group. Dell said Base’s other major existing investors are re-invested, including Thrive Capital, a16z, Lightspeed, Trust Ventures, CapitalG, and more.
“All the investors are really long-term oriented thinkers, given the size of the opportunity and the time it will take to kind of execute into it,” Dell said. “We’ve made a lot of progress but, in the grand scheme of things, we’re really just getting started.”
Dell’s famous father, Michael, is not involved in Base, but does serve as a mentor and, certainly, the name recognition doesn’t hurt with fundraising. After all, Michael Dell is currently the fifth-wealthiest person in the world behind Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Google co-founders—and just ahead of Mark Zuckerberg.
Building home battery power
Prior to this year, Base was forced to rely on installing third-party batteries. Now, Base is building its own systems designed specifically for powering homes and providing electricity back to the grid—not like the systems primarily intended for charging electric vehicles in garages.
“This battery is designed to be a grid resource,” Dell said. “It’s bigger, it installs faster, it switches over cleaner, it’s more powerful, it has more duration.”
Base keeps its options simple: one or two-battery home systems. “Most people actually want two, but not everyone has room on the side of their house for two,” he said.
The new battery can store 39.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity, significantly more than most of its competitors.
In this age of rapidly rising electricity demand from the AI boom—and strained electric grids nationwide—Dell argued that Base is benefiting customers both by strengthening the local power grids and by keeping the electricity going in the event of a grid failure.
“We’re charging the batteries when prices on the grid are low, and we’re discharging the batteries with demand when prices on the grid or high,” he said.
With the new entry into Illinois, Base is even offering some potential customers battery installation costs of $95—versus the standard $695—to gain greater market penetration.
“We’ll likely experiment with pricing based on market signals as we enter different markets,” Dell said.
Michael Dell’sZach DellZach Dell’sBase PowerAmericaEuropeDell TechnologiesMichael DellZachJustBaseDell
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