Our Investment in Aston Power

The artificial intelligence revolution has created an unprecedented power crisis, and it's going to keep escalating. Hyperscalers will pour trillions of dollars into data center infrastructure over the next five years, but they're running into a fundamental constraint: the grid simply cannot deliver power fast enough. Data centers consumed 35 gigawatts of power in 2025, and demand could reach 120 gigawatts by 2030. Utilities have committed to meet a portion of this, but with no connection dates specified. Traditional approaches to solving this problem take five to seven years to deliver power. But AI workloads can't wait that long, and we can't expect builders to operate as energy experts just to power their vision.

This is why we're excited to announce our investment in Aston Power, the team building the hybrid power infrastructure we need to support the world's most demanding workloads.

Hybrid power for the AI era

Aston is building hybrid power infrastructure that delivers electricity to data centers in approximately two years-less than half the time of traditional solutions. The company combines four power sources into a single orchestrated system: public utility power, privately transmitted off-site renewable resources, long-duration storage and on-site gas generation for firming and balancing.

Aston's software layer switches seamlessly between these four sources to optimize for cost, efficiency, and resilience, all while maintaining 99.9% uptime. This orchestration approach is technologically equivalent to the telecommunications industry's evolution from circuit switching to packet switching. Instead of one dedicated energy path, data centers can rely on multiple energy sources, alternated automatically and optimized in real time.

Aston acts as the project developer, designing the power architecture, securing permits and contracts, arranging project finance, and providing the software to orchestrate operations. Unlike virtual power plants that orchestrate generation (supply), Aston orchestrates load assets (demand)-and provides industrial private grids to their customers. Aston's customers can purchase certainty as a service with a locked-in "live" date, ramp profile, and a service-level agreement that guarantees 99.9% power availability.

A multi-trillion dollar market at an inflection point

The numbers behind the data center power crisis are staggering. Capital expenditures on data centers reached $455 billion in 2024 and $600 billion in 2025. Over the next five years, hyperscalers alone are projected to invest over $2 trillion, with total market investment expectations ranging from $3-7 trillion. Critically, only 40% of this demand is from AI training-the rest comes from traditional cloud workloads and AI inference, meaning this isn't a temporary spike but a sustained transformation of computing infrastructure. Aston is built not only to meet the current demands of AI, but to power all aspects of the next industrial cycle.

Several converging trends make Aston's solution particularly compelling:

1. Grid constraints are real and worsening. Utilities have committed to delivering 60 gigawatts of new data center load but cannot specify when that power will actually be available. Traditional grid build-out timelines simply cannot keep pace with demand.
2. Hyperscalers are desperate for speed. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft cannot afford to wait 5-7 years for power. Projects that can deliver in 2-3 years command significant premiums and strategic value.
3. Hybrid power is becoming the consensus solution. According to JLL's data center team, market sentiment toward hybrid power has dramatically improved since October 2025, with hyperscalers now viewing it as the path forward rather than an experimental approach.

Leadership team with a proven track record

The convergence of factors affirms that the time is right for a power solution like Aston's to make it to market, and we're confident that Aston's leadership team is the right one to execute this critical function. CEO Greg Robinson and CTO Ed McKenzie co-founded Aston Power in North Carolina in 2022 with the explicit mission to build the fastest path to clean energy for the next industrial cycle. Greg, Ed, and the rest of their leadership team combine deep expertise in power trading, utility operations, data center requirements, and project development-exactly the skillset needed to navigate the complex intersection of energy infrastructure and hyperscale computing.

Our connection to Aston's leadership team is personal. We learned about Aston Power through Head of Development Doug Chambers. Doug founded FieldLens, a construction tech startup backed by Borealis Ventures, where Jesse worked closely with him. FieldLens was later acquired by WeWork, and our team has kept in touch with Doug since.

We were excited to partner with Doug again, and to join Ed, Greg, and the Aston team on this new venture. And in our diligence process, built conviction that Aston has differentiated itself through a well-developed and de-risked supply chain, detailed technical analysis to support delivery timelines and reliability expectations, and a team that understands both the utility side and the customer side of the equation.

Building the infrastructure for the next industrial cycle

At Building Ventures, we invest in companies that enable a better built world by removing constraints and unlocking new possibilities. The AI revolution will reshape industries from healthcare, to scientific research, and countless other fields-but only if we can deliver the power infrastructure to support it. Aston Power isn't just solving a near-term bottleneck. The company is pioneering a fundamentally better approach-one that is faster to deploy, more resilient, more cost-effective, and better aligned with customer's sustainability goals. By orchestrating multiple power sources with intelligent software, Aston can scale to 600 megawatts by 2030, deliver tier-1 uptime, and provide power at scale in 2-3 years instead of 5-10.

Unlike other seed-stage investments, Aston is relatively far along in its development, and has already secured $1.5 billion in committed project financing from an institutional investor, validated its approach with premier colocation providers, and secured exclusivity on strategic sites. With this round of financing, the company needs to execute on project deployment, but the technical approach is proven, the market demand is high, and the team has the experience to deliver.

For all of these reasons, we're thrilled to co-lead in Aston Power's $20 million Series A round, along with our friends at TDK Ventures, with participation from JLL. With a robust pipeline of projects and the requisite partnerships already in place, we feel confident in Aston's ability to execute against their plan. Our team looks forward to working closely alongside the Aston team as they build the power infrastructure that will enable the next generation of AI innovation #forabetterbuiltworld.