At 007 Venture Partners, we are drawn to founders who build with conviction, clarity, and care. Not just companies, but infrastructure. Not just innovation, but execution.
In the global AI compute market, a market where grid interconnection queues now exceed seven years in primary markets and hundreds of billions in AI capex sits stranded waiting for power, we saw not just another energy startup, but a team solving the problem that every incumbent ignores: what happens when the grid simply cannot keep up.
That's what Voxel Energy is here to fix.
A New Kind of Data Center
Voxel Energy is building what others have been too comfortable to attempt: a truly off-grid, self-sustaining data center powered entirely by solar energy and second-life EV batteries. Not good as in "good enough." But good as in: operational in months, cost-efficient by design, and built from the ground up for the AI workloads that need power right now.
Instead of forcing neoclouds and colocation operators to wait years for utility interconnection, Voxel gives them a full-stack energy infrastructure platform. Solar generation, proprietary DC microgrid distribution, upcycled Tesla battery storage, and powered data hall shells, deployed on a lease and PPA model. No grid connection required.
The best grid connection, as Voxel puts it, is no grid connection.
The results are already validating the thesis: signed commercial agreements with leading neoclouds, construction financing secured, thousands of acres under site contract in New Mexico, and a working prototype already running off-grid compute. Voxel won the audience choice award at YC's W26 Product Showcase, with multiple neoclouds in active diligence and a growing pipeline spanning colocation operators and HPC labs.
From Prototype to a National Infrastructure Platform
Voxel isn't just a solar project. The company operates across two core products: Powered Shells, full site development including solar, battery storage, power distribution, and data hall delivered at a fraction of the cost of grid-connected equivalents; and Standalone BESS containers for existing data centers needing immediate capacity or surge buffering at roughly half the market rate for new battery storage.
The technical moat is real and compounding. Traditional solar-to-rack systems involve six or more AC/DC power conversion stages, each burning energy and generating heat. Voxel's patented DC microgrid architecture eliminates four of those stages, delivering up to 97% efficiency during solar hours and an estimated 10-15% system efficiency advantage over AC-based alternatives.
What makes this more than an efficiency story is the energy economics at site level. Voxel's system model shows its sites generating significant net surplus energy annually, far more than their data centers consume. Peak summer days produce hundreds of MWh in surplus, and even worst-case winter deficits are comfortably covered by the built-in 20-hour battery buffer. That surplus energy is sold back to the grid, turning the solar asset into a direct revenue stream for roughly nine months of the year. The energy infrastructure doesn't just power the business. It pays for itself.
The battery arbitrage is equally structural. Voxel sources upcycled Tesla Model 3 and Y battery packs through proprietary dismantler relationships at a fraction of the cost of new stationary battery systems. That cost advantage is protected by dedicated supply contracts, proprietary diagnostic tooling, and six-plus years of degradation data accumulated through the CTO's prior company. Every site that goes live deepens those relationships and that data. That's a flywheel incumbents simply cannot fast-follow.
Why Now
The macro environment has never been more aligned for what Voxel is building.
The AI compute revolution is being throttled by a power crisis that isn't making headlines but is quietly shaping every hyperscaler's roadmap. McKinsey estimates roughly 35GW of new US data center capacity is needed by 2030, with 25-33% of that expected to be served behind the meter. Grid interconnection queues already exceed seven years in primary markets, and many utilities have stopped accepting new applications entirely. The infrastructure that powered the cloud era was simply not built for this pace.
And yet the traditional infrastructure incumbents remain structurally slow. Utility-dependent developers are queuing for power that won't arrive for nearly a decade. New stationary battery systems carry long lead times and premium price tags. Diesel and gas backup generation trades speed for emissions. That gap is Voxel's opening, and Google's $4.75B acquisition of Intersect Power in 2025 is the clearest possible signal that hyperscalers are already paying for whoever cracks this first. Voxel's cost structure is materially superior and its architecture is more defensible than any comparable we have seen.
The Founders
The best infrastructure bets are built by people who have already built the hard thing once. At Voxel, all three founders have.
Casey Spencer, CEO, is a three-time founder with prior exits and an award-winning engineer who served on Tesla's Infotainment and Autopilot teams. During Tesla's production hell in 2018, he didn't manage from a distance. He stood on the assembly line and built Model 3 vehicles by hand, helping stand up ad-hoc assembly lines under the most intense shipping pressure in modern automotive history. He went on to bootstrap an EV manufacturing business to meaningful revenue entirely on his own, a rare demonstration of capital-efficient execution in the most unforgiving category of startups: physical products.
Max Pfeiffer, CTO, is also a three-time founder and the core inventor of Voxel's DC microgrid architecture, holding the licensed IP at the heart of the platform. He founded Maxwell Vehicles, an EV manufacturing company that has operated for seven-plus years and deployed more than 12MWh of battery systems to major commercial customers across retail, food distribution, and higher education. Zero field failures. He has operated with the same power conversion vendor for over five years without a single failure. The technology is not theoretical. It is operational.
Evan Schmidt, COO, brings a decade of large-scale commercial construction experience and has personally delivered tens of millions of dollars in construction and data center projects. He owns EPC delivery, project finance, and tax equity structuring for every site Voxel develops. The experience he brings is precisely what prevents first-of-kind infrastructure companies from dying in the execution gap.
This is not a team theorising about energy infrastructure. They have built it, at scale, and are now applying that capability to the largest structural opportunity in the AI economy.
Why We Invested
At 007VP, we invest in founders solving hard problems at scale, especially those building foundational infrastructure for the next era of the global economy.
Voxel fits that mission precisely. It is a capital-efficient, technically differentiated, and mission-critical company led by founders whose individual careers were each, independently, the right preparation for this exact problem. Casey's hardware manufacturing instincts. Max's battery IP and zero-failure operational track record. Evan's construction and project finance expertise. Together, they cover every dimension of what it takes to deliver a first-of-kind DC-native data center campus on time and on budget. That combination is extraordinarily rare.
We are proud to invest alongside Pioneer Fund, Rebel Fund, Robinhood Ventures, Leap Forward Ventures, and Y Combinator
But more than the cap table, we believe in what Voxel stands for.
We believe the AI economy cannot wait seven years for grid power. We believe that second-life batteries, native DC architecture, and solar at scale are not a workaround but the most elegant and cost-effective answer to a structural infrastructure crisis. And we believe that signed commercial agreements, secured construction financing, and a working off-grid prototype are not lucky milestones. They are the clearest signal we have seen in years that a team has the right technology, the right timing, and the right execution capability to build something that matters.
That is what Voxel Energy is building.
The Road Ahead
The vision is bold. The execution so far has been even bolder.
With its first campus in New Mexico targeting hundreds of megawatts across three build phases through 2028, the trajectory is clear. The financial model at scale projects strong revenue and margins that compound with every additional campus, underpinned by long-term PPA structures and grid energy sales that turn solar infrastructure into a continuously earning asset.
The platform also carries meaningful impact credentials. By delivering reliable, 24/7 solar-powered compute infrastructure, upcycling Tesla battery packs for ten-plus additional years of useful life, and enabling AI infrastructure in markets and timelines inaccessible via conventional grid, Voxel is building the next generation of data centers without compounding the emissions of the fossil fuel era. The mission aligns closely with UN Sustainable Development Goals 7, 9, 12, and 13.
As the team completes UL 9540 certification, delivers its factory demo, and advances its first customer pilots toward go-live, we are proud to support Casey, Max, Evan, and the Voxel team on this journey.
Because when you give the AI industry a reliable and clean source of power that doesn't depend on a grid that can't keep up, you don't just solve a logistics problem. You unlock the infrastructure layer that the next decade of human progress runs on.
And that's what Voxel Energy does.
