Heron Power, a California-based energy startup focused on grid-scale battery storage, has raised $38 million in Series A funding to expand its advanced energy platform. The round was led by Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund, with participation from Powerhouse Ventures, Breakthrough Energy, Energy Impact Partners, Gigascale Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and climate-tech veterans JB Straubel and Zach Kirkhorn.

Founded by Drew Baglino, Heron is developing a novel battery architecture designed for long-duration storage and high-efficiency load balancing across utility-scale grids.

In a world rapidly shifting toward renewables, Heron is solving one of the last remaining barriers: reliable, resilient, and cost-effective storage at scale.

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What Heron Power Actually Does

Heron’s technology is aimed squarely at solving the volatility of renewable energy generation. Its platform combines:

• Proprietary electrochemical cell chemistry optimized for multi-day discharge cycles
  
• Intelligent thermal and charge management systems for extreme temperature performance
  
• Modular designs for easy deployment across commercial, municipal, and grid-edge sites
  
• Full lifecycle analytics to optimize energy arbitrage, peak shaving, and backup performance
  

Unlike lithium-ion systems designed for short bursts of power, Heron’s architecture is tuned for long-duration performance - hours to days of sustained output with lower degradation over time.

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Why Energy Storage Is the Bottleneck - and the Opportunity

As countries transition toward renewable energy sources like solar and wind, the grid faces a critical issue: intermittency. Energy can’t always be generated when demand peaks, and peak generation (e.g., solar midday) doesn’t align with evening consumption.

That’s why grid-scale battery innovation is surging:

• The global energy storage market is projected to grow from $10.5 billion in 2023 to $58.8 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 27.7% (Fortune Business Insights)
  
• U.S. utilities alone are expected to deploy over 100 GW of storage capacity by 2035 to stabilize renewable integration (EIA)
  
• According to McKinsey, 50% of new energy projects by 2040 will require some form of storage component
  
• Long-duration energy storage (LDES) could enable up to $4 trillion in avoided infrastructure costs globally by 2040 (LDES Council)
  

Heron’s technology directly addresses the need for reliable, long-lasting, and scalable alternatives to conventional lithium-ion and diesel backup systems.

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Why This Round Matters

This raise signals far more than financial momentum - it reflects a shift in how the climate-tech ecosystem is thinking about resilience and infrastructure at scale.

Heron isn’t trying to outshine solar or wind innovation. Instead, it’s focused on the less glamorous - but far more critical - question: How do we make those renewables reliable, 24/7?

That’s where the company’s real edge lies. Because Heron didn’t build something that looks futuristic. It built something that makes the future function.

And here’s the founder insight worth stealing: the most scalable climate solutions often aren’t the ones that change the world visibly. They’re the ones that quietly prevent failure behind the scenes.

Heron didn’t chase disruption for its own sake. It asked: Where will the system break once the energy transition reaches scale? Then it engineered the solution before it broke.

That’s the leverage: founders who solve problems before they’re headlines become indispensable when the headlines hit.

If you want to build in hard tech, this is the map - don’t just think about impact. Think about dependency. Make your solution the part of the system that, once installed, no one can afford to remove. That’s not just product-market fit. That’s system-lock fit.

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Market Outlook: The Race to Decarbonize the Grid Is Accelerating

With climate policy tightening and energy volatility rising, grid-scale battery innovation has become a global imperative. And capital is flowing accordingly:

• The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act allocates $369 billion toward clean energy incentives, including tax credits for battery manufacturing and storage deployment
  
• Battery storage deployments in the U.S. are projected to grow 4x by 2030, led by California, Texas, and New York (BloombergNEF)
  
• Global investment in next-gen battery startups topped $12 billion in 2023, up 45% YoY (CB Insights)
  
• Long-duration storage is expected to grow 32% CAGR through 2032, with flow, metal-air, and hybrid chemistries gaining traction alongside Heron’s approach
  

Heron is entering this wave with not only technology, but deep technical credibility. Its founder, Drew Baglino, previously served as SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla, overseeing multiple product launches at the intersection of hardware, software, and grid integration.

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What’s Next for Heron?

Heron also plans to invest in environmental compliance and second-life recovery infrastructure, ensuring the technology is as sustainable as it is resilient.