Michael Dell’s son built a $13B home battery business-and he’s going on 30 years old

Key Points:

• Zach Dell, son of Michael Dell, co-founded Base in 2023, which recently raised $1 billion in a Series D round, boosting its valuation from $4 billion to $13 billion in under a year.
• Base focuses on residential retail electricity, offering battery storage systems as a backup power solution with a low upfront installation fee and a flat monthly membership, aiming to reduce overall electricity costs for customers.
• The company has rapidly expanded from installing one battery system daily to over 100 per day, serving more than 30,000 customers, and has opened its own battery manufacturing plant in Austin with a second larger factory planned for 2027.
• Base operates as an infrastructure company, owning and managing assets in wholesale power markets, and plans to expand into additional U.S. states and international markets like the U.K., Germany, and Australia.
• The new home battery systems are designed specifically for grid support, offering higher capacity and efficiency than competitors, and Base is experimenting with pricing strategies to increase market penetration, such as reduced installation fees in Illinois.