Energy Vault

Energy Vault was founded in 2017 in Lugano, Switzerland, and is co-headquartered in Westlake Village, California. It was founded by Robert Piconi (CEO), Swiss engineer and serial entrepreneur Andrea Pedretti (CTO), and Bill Gross, the founder of the famous Idealab startup studio in Pasadena, California. The founding story begins in 2017, when Gross reached out to Piconi — whom he had met in 2008 — about a radical concept for gravity-based grid storage: using a crane system with machine vision to autonomously stack and lower heavy composite bricks, converting potential energy to electricity when needed. Piconi, who brought 30+ years of Fortune 100 executive experience from companies including BP (Amoco), Bell Labs/Lucent, and Alcatel, had also previously founded and led several healthcare technology companies that were acquired by private equity. He saw the concept as a transformational opportunity. Pedretti, an ETH-trained civil engineer with over 40 patents, was the inventor and engineering lead. Energy Vault is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker NRGV.

Energy Vault was founded to solve one of the most acute problems in the clean energy transition: storing electricity economically when it is abundant (during high wind or high solar periods) and releasing it when it is needed (overnight, or during calm weather). The founding thesis was that gravity — the largest form of energy storage already deployed at scale via pumped hydro — could be brought to new locations and applications without geographic restriction if solid composite blocks were substituted for water. The company's AI-powered energy management system software autonomously orchestrates the raising and lowering of blocks, enabling a millisecond-scale response time for grid balancing. Over time, Energy Vault has expanded its portfolio beyond gravity storage to include battery energy storage systems (BESS) and green hydrogen storage, positioning itself as a technology-agnostic energy storage platform.

Energy Vault raised $110 million pre-IPO, including a $100 million Series B from SoftBank Vision Fund — at the time the largest single energy storage investment ever made — and earlier backing from Cemex Ventures and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures. The company went public via SPAC merger in February 2022, valuing it at $1.6 billion. Its investors included Idealab (Bill Gross’s firm), which incubated the original concept.

Energy Vault's first commercial gravity energy storage system (EVx) was completed in China in 2023 in partnership with Atlas Renewable Energy. The company has shifted strategic focus to its B-Vault battery energy storage platform, which has gained traction in the United States through both owned/operated sites and licensing agreements in India and Australia. In 2025, Energy Vault signed an agreement with Alliant Energy — the Wisconsin-based utility in your tracker — to provide energy storage for a project capable of keeping 18,000 Wisconsin homes online for up to 10 hours, partnering Energy Dome’s CO₂ battery technology with Energy Vault’s EMS software.

Publicly traded (NYSE: NRGV). Raised ~$470M+ pre-IPO. SPAC merger completed Feb 2023. Key pre-IPO investors: SoftBank, Idealab, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures.