Zach Dell

Zach Dell was born in August 1996 and grew up in Texas. He knew from childhood that he wanted to become an entrepreneur; after several early ventures failed, he went into investing to study what makes a great business. He is the son of Dell Technologies founder Michael DellMichael DellMichael Dell is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies. Starting from a direct-sales personal computer business, he led the company’s take-private, its acquisition of EMC, and its return to the public market, and with his wife Susan Dell co-founded a foundation that funds education, health, and children’s investment accounts.Open the full entry, who is not involved in running Base but serves as his mentor.⁠[1][2][3][1][4][1]

In 2023, Zach Dell co-founded Base Power in Austin with Justin Lopas and became its chief executive officer; Lopas had previously worked on building rockets at SpaceX and led manufacturing at AndurilAnduril IndustriesAnduril Industries is a defense technology company headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, United States, co-founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey and several former Palantir and Oculus employees. It develops autonomous drones, unmanned undersea vehicles, border surveillance towers, counter-drone systems, and the Lattice command-and-control software, and builds its own large-scale weapons manufacturing facilities. As of May 2026, the company was valued at $61 billion.Open the full entry. In his founder’s letter, Dell wrote that he had watched Winter Storm Uri knock out power to millions of homes for days, while electricity prices had nearly doubled over the past 20 years and the grid could no longer meet demand, so he founded Base to rebuild the grid.⁠[2][5][5][3][3]

On June 24, 2026, Base Power launched in the Chicago-area service territory of the utility ComEd, its first market outside Texas, with members’ electricity supply priced at least 25% below ComEd’s default supply rate. Dell said Illinois was chosen because electricity costs there were climbing fast and the grid was under strain, exactly the conditions in which home batteries are most useful. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said Base chose the state because of its Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, which encourages distributed energy storage and virtual power plants. At the time, Base was already powering more than 20,000 homes in Texas.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5]

In July 2026, after receiving more than $4 million in incentives from the City of Austin, Base Power began offering its 40-kilowatt-hour batteries to Austin Energy customers; the contract could provide Austin Energy with up to 40 megawatts of distributed battery capacity.⁠[6][6]

In August 2026, Base Power announced that it had closed a $1 billion Series D round, with its valuation rising from $4 billion to $13 billion in less than a year and its total funding exceeding $2.5 billion. The round was co-led by Ribbit Capital, Addition, Valor Equity Partners, and JPMorgan Chase’s Strategic Investment Group, with participation from existing investors including Thrive Capital, a16z, Lightspeed, and CapitalG; former NFL player J.J. Watt also invested.⁠[1][2][1][1][7]

At the same time, the company launched Base Core, a new-generation home battery that can store 39.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity and is designed for powering homes and providing electricity back to the grid; previously Base could only install third-party batteries. Dell said: “This battery is designed to be a grid resource.” By then, Base had gone from installing one battery system a day to more than 100, with more than 30,000 customers and more than 500 employees in Austin.⁠[6][1][1][1][1][6]

On September 6, 2026, David Senra’s podcast released an interview with Dell. On the show he discussed the practices Base has adopted from former SpaceX employees and said that Base will be his last company.⁠[4][4][4]

Rather than selling consumers expensive backup power systems, Base charges an installation fee of no more than $695 and a monthly membership fee of $19, installs batteries in customers’ homes while retaining ownership, and operates the batteries as a fleet in wholesale electricity markets: charging when electricity is cheap, discharging when it is expensive, and powering homes during outages. Dell said: “We’re really an infrastructure company. We own and operate the assets in the wholesale power markets. That’s really where we make our money.”⁠[1][4][1]

In 2026, Base opened its first battery factory, Base Factory 1, in the former Austin American-Statesman newspaper building in Austin, and began building a second, 486,000-square-foot factory near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, slated for completion in 2027. Dell aims to bring Base to every neighborhood in the United States and is considering markets such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia.⁠[2][6][1][1][1]

Base Power: Official website: https://www.basepowercompany.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3][3]