Why two SpaceX alumni are betting on solar and batteries to power the AI craze

The pair initially funded Ambrosia with their own money, but the startup recently took an investment from DFJ Growth. Spangelo declined to disclose the size of the investment.

Spangelo drew several parallels between Ambrosia and the work at SpaceX. “A lot of these challenges are very similar across regulatory, technical, go-to-market. If we can bring some of that experience to this, hopefully we can have an impact,” she said. Plus, she said building the power plant modules has been “kind of like deploying a satellite constellation,” Spangelo said. “You launch four, you learn, you iterate.”

To test its thesis, Ambrosia began building a power plant in West Texas in January, one month after the company was incorporated. “After this week, we’ll be almost halfway complete with that power plant,” Longmier said. Six weeks ago, the startup turned on some of the completed sections, and they’ve been operating at 100% capacity since then, he added.

“Our system is basically infinitely scalable,” Spangelo said, allowing customers to kick the tires before committing the large system. The power plants can be connected to the grid or installed behind the meter.

The systems could get quite large. “We have a couple of partners where there’s access to like a million acres,” Longmier said. At that scale, Ambrosia could build a power plant on the order of 30 gigawatts, based on a recent study of solar land requirements.

But first, the company is starting smaller, on the order of 20 to 30 megawatts. For now, many of the parts are off-the-shelf, but Ambrosia has plans to gradually replace those with its own custom designs. It’s also planning to build a factory in Austin, Texas, which will allow it to take on larger projects in a shorter time period. The goal is to deliver “gigawatts by the end of the decade,” Spangelo said. “We’re pretty ambitious.”