Ambrosia Energy aims to undercut gas power with solar and batteries

Two former SpaceX employees have a pitch for large-scale cloud and AI infrastructure providers: they are building power plants on Earth that cost less and get built faster than a natural gas power plant. Ambrosia Energy, co-founded by president Sara Spangelo and CEO Ben Longmier, is pairing solar panels with lithium-ion batteries to keep electrons flowing around the clock. The startup asserts it can deliver this power for $100 per megawatt-hour. By comparison, building and operating a new combined cycle gas turbine—a standard, efficient power plant technology—costs around $107 per megawatt-hour, according to financial firm Lazard.

To lower costs, Ambrosia trickle-charges its batteries during the day and slowly discharges them at night. These refinements bring the cost for the entire package down to 1.5x what the company pays for battery cells. While the company currently uses off-the-shelf parts, it plans to gradually replace those with its own custom designs at a current scale on the order of 20 to 30 megawatts. According to Sara Spangelo, co-founder and president of Ambrosia Energy, “A power plant should be able to be built at any scale in 12 months from contract signing to power on.” She also noted that the system is basically infinitely scalable, allowing customers to test the setup before committing.

Speed is a critical differentiator, as traditional gas turbines face a five- to seven-year backlog. To test its model, Ambrosia began building a power plant in West Texas in January. CEO Ben Longmier stated that the startup would be almost halfway complete with the plant after this week. Six weeks ago, the startup turned on some completed sections, which have been operating at 100% capacity since then. The power plants can be connected to the grid or installed behind the meter—meaning energy generation connected directly to a facility rather than the public grid. The startup recently took an investment from DFJ Growth and is planning to build a factory in Austin, Texas.

Ambrosia could upend the energy world if it can deliver at scale. The founders, who previously worked on Starlink at SpaceX after it acquired Swarm, view energy infrastructure through an aerospace lens. Spangelo compared building the modules to deploying a satellite constellation, where they can launch a few, learn, and iterate. She noted that regulatory, technical, and go-to-market challenges are similar across both industries. Longmier added that partners provide access to like a million acres of land, which could support a potential power plant scale on the order of 30 gigawatts. Spangelo stated that the company is pretty ambitious, with the ultimate goal of reaching gigawatt scale.

Why it matters

Ambrosia Energy is attempting to address the energy needs of the AI industry by building solar and battery power plants that are faster and cheaper to deploy than traditional natural gas turbines.