Critical Loop Raises $26M Series A to Accelerate Grid Interconnection
- Modular hardware and software stack delivers power to industrial sites in days or weeks with a team of engineers and operators from SpaceX, Tesla, Palantir, and Rivian
- Partnerships include San Diego International Airport; LG Energy Solution Vertech will supply domestically manufactured energy storage systems
LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Critical Loop, an industrial power solutions company, today announced a $26 million Series A round led by Conifer Infrastructure Partners and Hanover, with participation from Better Ventures, Climate Capital, Adapt Nation Capital, and Cyrus Ventures. The raise brings total committed equity and debt funding to date for the company to $49 million and will accelerate the company’s work with partners, including San Diego International Airport, supported by a supply agreement for US-made batteries with LG Energy Solution Vertech.
Businesses and utilities across the United States routinely wait for years for permanent grid infrastructure upgrades before they can connect or expand. Critical Loop’s approach couples flexible interconnection with microgrids to close that gap to days or weeks. The company combines battery storage, generation, and Cygnus, its software-defined power controller, into a single deployable platform.
“In just a couple of years, we’ve built a software and hardware stack that has the potential to accelerate time to power from years to days, and with this team, we believe we can keep doing things that were previously considered impossible,” said Bala Ramamurthy, Co-Founder and CEO, Critical Loop. “The caliber of people we have attracted makes me confident about what we’ll build next.”
Critical Loop’s CLB-5100 is a scalable, integrated 1 MW battery system that can connect to on-site generation, existing grid infrastructure, and emerging sources of distributed generation. The system can also be moved to wherever grid capacity is constrained, allowing utilities to connect customers while permanent upgrades proceed in the background. While AI data centers have brought urgency to power demand, they represent one subset of the broader load growth facing the distribution grid. Critical Loop built CLB-5100 to support this larger system as utilities prepare for the next wave of industrial and digital infrastructure.
“Grid interconnection queues are limiting industrial growth, and the current solutions are mostly slow to deploy and inflexible, which does not meet current need,” said Nick Stork, Founder and Managing Partner at Conifer Infrastructure Partners. “Critical Loop is working on a timeline that actually matches what customers are dealing with. Critical Loop is delivering a real and immediate solution while also offering customers long-term value beyond solving for today’s need for power, and this team has shown they can deliver on that.”
“Moore’s Law-style effects are beginning to deliver in energy and the impact for America is profound. After years of working on advanced technologies, including gallium nitride (GaN) in power conversion and silicon-based lithium-ion batteries, I am excited to be bringing a full-stack industrial and commercial power system to power-hungry companies and grid operators alike,” said Joe Malchow, Founder and General Partner at HNVR Technology Investment Management. “Critical Loop’s CLB-5100 speeds time-to-power and buys down net power cost – adding resilience to the grid while unlocking predictable costs for companies whose growth is at stake. This is quite literally the prerequisite to a new industrial revolution. I am immensely proud of the world-class team delivering the CLB product line with quality and speed.”
Recent Critical Loop milestones include winning a competitive bid to optimize onsite solar and batteries serving an 11 MW load at San Diego International Airport, the busiest single-runway airport in the United States; keeping Cover’s manufacturing facility fully operational for eight months during a utility outage; enabling Terawatt Infrastructure to secure flexible service connections for over 4 MW of incremental capacity across two EV charging sites in a few months rather than waiting years for utility buildout; and deploying two hybrid microgrids at Mojave test facilities within days of notice. Critical Loop also secured a supply agreement with LG Energy Solution Vertech for US-made batteries, is a recipient of the California Clean Off-Road Equipment Voucher Program, and was cited directly by the California Public Utilities Commission as part of a February 2026 rulemaking, which directs SCE and PG&E to file new Flexible Service Connection Tariff options to customers facing grid constraints.
“The industrial real estate market in Northern California runs on timelines that cannot afford to sit idle for years,” said Greg Matter, Vice Chairman, Head of Advanced Manufacturing, JLL. “When Critical Loop can get a facility connected in weeks or months, that changes what developers and tenants can commit to.”
Critical Loop is currently operating across California, with plans to expand into other territories where similar grid constraints are driving demand for faster power connections. For more information, please visit criticalloop.com.
About Critical Loop
Critical Loop is an industrial power solutions company that brings customers online faster than traditional grid expansion. Their energy platform combines advanced autonomous control, battery energy storage, and flexible power generation to solve time-to-power problems for industrial facilities, data centers, utilities, and critical infrastructure. By deploying nimble, modular, scalable microgrids that maximize existing grid capacity while adding just the right amount of on-site power, Critical Loop strives to enable businesses to access reliable, cost-effective electricity in days, weeks, or months rather than years. The company is on a mission to create a world with abundant, affordable energy where power is available, reliable, and no longer a constraint on progress. For more information, visit criticalloop.com.
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