SoftBank bets $130mn on robot-assisted solar farm company

Welcome to Energy Source, coming to you from New York.

My colleagues Malcolm Moore, Jamie Smyth and Amanda Chu are attending CERAWeek in Houston, where they reported that Amazon, Google and Meta have pledged to support the tripling of nuclear capacity by 2050. Nuclear power has become popular amid rising electricity demand, but developers of the technology still face technical, regulatory and funding risks.

Another theme of CERAWeek has been whether US oil producers can continue to expand production, even when the Trump administration is pushing for low energy prices. Today we have published a story that asks: would $50 oil really be good for the US?

In today’s newsletter we have an exclusive report on SoftBank, which is investing in a company developing robots that build solar farms. Our second item takes a look at a study that found data centre capital expenditures surpassed $195bn between 2023 and 2024.

Thanks for reading — Alexandra

Robot-assisted solar farm company gets SoftBank’s $130mn support

SoftBank has led a $130mn funding round in Terabase Energy, a northern California-based company that is developing robots and automated systems using artificial intelligence systems to rapidly build solar farms.

The investment by the Japanese tech group’s Vision Fund 2 will enable Terabase to scale up the manufacturing of its robotics-assisted assembly line, which it claims can slash construction costs and timelines. The technology has already been deployed at three small pilot solar farms in the US with a capacity of about 40 megawatts, and two more projects are about to commence, according to the company.

The company intends to use the new funding to scale up its business and build solar farms with a capacity for hundreds of megawatts in 2026, said co-founder and chief executive Matt Campbell.  

“We focus exclusively on the very large solar farms, which were the number-one source of new generation capacity in the US and globally last year,” he told Energy Source.  

“Our thesis is that the solar industry has come down the cost curve, but to keep accelerating the cost reductions you need to apply robotics and AI.”

The robotics assembly line is a type of automated, mobile factory that prefabricates sections of the solar farm on site and uses an off-road vehicle that delivers and installs the 12-metre-long solar panel section. Terabase is developing other robots that hook up the wires and attach the brackets to complete the installation process.

The assembly line is 50 metres long and can install 2,000 solar panels in eight hours.

Solar farm construction is typically a very labour-intensive business, and the deployment of robots and AI is expected to reduce the number of employees required in the construction process.

The assembly line system doubles installation productivity while enhancing build quality and eliminating manual lifting of heavy components, significantly improving workplace safety, according to the company.

Labour shortages are a significant issue facing the industry in many areas.

This investment comes at a time when recent breakthroughs in battery storage economics have made utility-scale solar plants the most cost-effective option for new electricity generation, according to the International Energy Agency.

Kentaro Matsui, managing partner at SoftBank Global Advisors, said surging energy demand, particularly from AI data centres, underscored the urgency of deploying scalable and sustainable solutions to roll out renewable energy.  

Existing venture capital investors Fifth Wall, Prelude Ventures, SJF Ventures and EDP Ventures also contributed to the Series C fundraise, which brings the total capital raised by Terabase to $200mn. Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy was an early investor in the company. (Jamie Smyth)

US data centre capital expenditures exceeded $195bn in past two years

US data centre capital expenditures surpassed $195bn from January 2023 through December 2024, with just 13 projects dominating investments, as the push to lead the artificial intelligence race drives large-scale developments.

A report from Wood Mackenzie’s Lens Power tracked the US data centre pipeline — defined as projects with planning, permitting, construction or commissioning activity — and found just 22 per cent of the projects cost more than $1bn. These projects, however, accounted for 73 per cent of the $195bn spent. Thirteen mega projects cost more than $4bn.

“This is a sort of land grab with a fear-of-missing-out sentiment, driving a lot of the investment,” said Ben Hertz-Shargel, global head of grid edge for Wood Mackenzie. “It’s a big bet that AI services will have strong revenue potential down the road but exactly what that potential is, is not known right now.”

Hertz-Shargel told Energy Source that many of the new facilities that were being built were designed to support AI. In some cases they were also designed to reduce water usage in response to environmental concerns — but doing so can in turn increase power demand, as the facility relies on electricity to evacuate heat from the facility.

The pipeline of US data centre capacity exceeded 92GW by the end of 2024, up from only 5GW coming into 2023, intensifying power demand.

The International Energy Agency reported that the average data centre is small and only demands 5-10MW, but it added that AI has created the need for large centres that are much more energy intensive and could have a power demand of 100MW or more. The median square footage of data centres increased 9.5 per cent between 2023 and 2024.

As capacity, square footage and proliferation of data centres increases, concerns over a significant strain on the power grid grows. North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned last year that the electricity grid faced “critical reliability challenges” as surging demand from AI strained US and Canadian grids.

Some companies have proposed bringing data centres online quickly by building them alongside power plants for maximum efficiency. But the practice, called co-location, is rare, according to Wood Mackenzie’s Lens Power. Only 7 per cent of the data centre projects the consultancy tracked have evidence of co-located resources.

Although data centres are most often co-located with natural gas generators, renewables and storage represent 42 per cent of deployments. Crypto projects represent a large portion of projects that are co-located with renewables.

Co-located generation projects have raised concerns over reliance on grid power that could raise customer costs and threaten grid reliability. Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected a proposal that would have increased a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant’s capacity to serve an on-site data centre because it could worsen grid reliability and raise costs for consumers.

Not only are data centre developers facing regulatory challenges but tariffs could also raise the cost of modernising ageing grid infrastructure. Hertz-Shargel added that if there were challenges importing critical equipment such as transformers or turbines from certain markets, that could restrict infrastructure development.

“If we fail to grow the grid, especially grow transmission . . . we run the risk of failing to build our industry domestically,” Hertz-Shargel said. (Alexandra White)

Job moves

• Enbridge has appointed Steven Williams as chair of the board. Williams has served as a director on the board since 2022 and his appointment follows the retirement of Pamela Carter.

• Exelon named David Dewalt to its board of directors. Dewalt is the founder and chief executive of cyber security and venture capital firm NightDragon.

• Voltalia has appointed Yoni Ammar as deputy chief executive after he served as the director of Europe, Africa and international.

• Southwest Power Pool has named Emily Pennel as chief of staff after 19 years at the company. She will report to incoming chief executive Lanny Nickell.

Power Points

• India, the world’s most populous nation, approved legislation to boost oil and gas exploration to help meet its energy needs as it industrialises its economy.

• Battery-maker Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in Sweden — a sign that the European industry has failed to catch up with China.

• US shale magnate Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources, in a joint venture with US-based TransAtlantic Petroleum, signed a deal with Turkish Petroleum to develop oil and gas reserves in Turkey.

Energy Source is written and edited by Jamie Smyth, Myles McCormick, Amanda Chu, Tom Wilson and Malcolm Moore, with support from the FT’s global team of reporters. Reach us at energy.source@ft.com and follow us on X at @FTEnergy. Catch up on past editions of the newsletter here.