Ambrosia begins work on Texas battery factory for off-grid data centers

Ambrosia Energy is building the battery supply for data centers designed to run on solar power without the grid. Work has begun on a planned 10 gigawatt-hour battery factory near Austin, Texas, CEO Ben Longmier said at TechCrunch Disrupt. The company expects the facility to reach full production in two to three years.

The 150,000-square-foot factory would supply Ambrosia’s own power-plant projects. Longmier told the San Francisco conference that its output would let the company build about 300 megawatts of power-plant capacity per year at its field sites. That is a deployment forecast, not power already available to data-center customers.

Ambrosia emerged from stealth in June with a plan to build data-center power plants at $100 per megawatt-hour. Longmier and co-founder Sara Spangelo chose solar panels paired with batteries as what they judged the cheapest option and the fastest to deploy.

Build the packs, buy the cells

The manufacturing strategy does not require Ambrosia to make the battery cells themselves. It buys existing cells and assembles them into its own packs. Longmier said the company has simplified both battery packs and solar mounts, cutting part counts and making many components in a factory rather than buying finished components from outside suppliers.

He put Ambrosia’s battery-pack cost at about 1.3 times the cost of the bare cells, compared with five to seven times for most stationary storage systems. He also claimed its pack has roughly 100 times fewer parts than competing designs the company has seen. Those comparisons are Ambrosia’s figures, not independently verified results.

That cost argument extends beyond the factory. Longmier said Ambrosia can profitably sell electricity at $100 per megawatt-hour even after installing extra solar panels and batteries to support continuous operation. He described that price as competitive with natural-gas turbines that large data-center operators are planning to use.

300 MWSolar capacity

Ambrosia plans this amount of solar-panel capacity at its first commercial plant.

660 MWhBattery storage

The planned batteries would store electricity for use beyond daylight hours.

30 MWContinuous power target

The combined installation is designed to deliver this continuous output, according to Longmier.

From daylight generation to overnight supply

Ambrosia plans to begin work on its first commercial power plant in West Texas later in 2026, Longmier said. That project is the intended commercial application of the solar-and-battery approach behind the factory: a power supply built to keep a data center operating beyond the hours when panels generate electricity.

During the day, solar panels would serve the data center while charging the batteries. The batteries would then discharge at night and on cloudy days. The proposed plant therefore pairs a much larger solar installation with a smaller continuous power commitment, rather than promising its full solar-panel capacity around the clock.

The West Texas design targets 99.3% uptime. That is a company goal for the planned commercial facility, not an operating record. It also puts a qualification beside the promise of continuous power: the design is intended to supply electricity day and night, but its stated uptime target is below 100%.

Ambrosia has tested the approach at a smaller scale. Longmier said sections of its pilot power plant have operated continuously for more than 100 days, and that the pilot can generate 200 kilowatts around the clock. The commercial project would move from that pilot-scale output to a 30-megawatt continuous-power target.