Packy McCormick stakes a bold claim in this third chapter on Base Power Company: a three-year-old startup is not just another energy player, but the potential architect of the next global energy monopoly. The piece moves beyond standard startup hype to argue that Base has identified the single most critical bottleneck in the modern grid—the inability to balance variable supply with unpredictable demand—and is building a vertically integrated solution that could rival the giants of the fossil fuel era.
The High Ground Strategy
McCormick frames Base's ascent through the lens of historical industrial dominance, comparing its trajectory to SpaceX in aerospace or Standard Oil in petroleum. The author argues that Base didn't just enter the market; it seized a strategic advantage by focusing on residential batteries in Texas, a state where the grid's fragility makes storage uniquely valuable. "Base picked the right energy bottleneck - the grid - and the right technology to unblock it - batteries," McCormick writes. This framing is compelling because it shifts the narrative from "green energy" to "industrial efficiency," suggesting that the path to a trillion-dollar valuation lies in solving a physics problem, not just a climate one.
The article highlights a specific metric of ambition: the CEO's offhand comment that the company could reach a $400 billion valuation when it was only worth $4 billion, a ratio that McCormick notes has held steady as the valuation grew. "I think we will crack that list and I think we can be near the top over time. I think we will be at the top," Zach Dell is quoted saying. This confidence is not presented as blind optimism but as a calculated bet on the sheer scale of the energy market. The author effectively uses the "High Ground" metaphor to explain why Base's early focus on manufacturing and software creates a moat that incumbents, burdened by legacy infrastructure, cannot easily cross.
Base exists to fix the grid and sell affordable, reliable power to those who consume it, and it is building a set of capabilities that it can deploy at the best opportunities to do that.
However, critics might note that the energy transition is fraught with regulatory hurdles that no amount of vertical integration can instantly solve. While Texas offers a unique testing ground due to its isolated grid, replicating this model in states with different utility structures or federal transmission constraints remains a significant, unproven variable.
The Capability Cannon
McCormick introduces a novel concept to describe Base's internal growth: the "Capability Cannon." This is not merely a product roadmap but a compounding set of skills in manufacturing, policy, and engineering that the company accumulates with every deployment. The author paraphrases the CEO's view that the company's first three years were essentially a crash course in scaling a hard-tech business. "Our first three years were basically learning a bunch of hard lessons about how to scale, build a brand, build a team, raise capital, manufacture and design products, optimize the supply chain, and the output of all of that is Base Core," Zach Dell explains. This distinction is vital; it suggests that the battery itself is just the vehicle for a deeper, more defensible operational capability.
The piece connects this to the broader context of the energy transition, noting that the grid struggles to match variable supply with unpredictable demand, a problem that has only been exacerbated by the ravenous power needs of data centers. McCormick draws a parallel to the historical evolution of the industry, where companies like Ford and Carnegie Steel won by controlling the most constrained part of their value chain. By manufacturing its own batteries in Texas, Base is attempting to replicate this integration. "Now, it's time to scale the fuck out of that," Dell is quoted, emphasizing the shift from proving the concept to dominating the market.
The author also touches on the company's expansion beyond Texas into Illinois and its pivot toward regulated utility customers, noting that over 50% of recent installs are now on such homes. This diversification is presented as a natural evolution of the "Capability Cannon," allowing the company to apply its Texas-learned lessons to new geographies and customer types. Yet, the argument glosses over the immense difficulty of navigating the patchwork of state-level regulations in the US, where a strategy that works in the deregulated Texas market may face entirely different barriers in the Northeast or the West.
The Four Pillars of Power
McCormick concludes by outlining Base's long-term vision through a framework called "Make, Move, Store, Sell." The author explains that while Base has currently mastered "Store," the ambition is to integrate backward into generation and forward into retail and wholesale markets. "There are massive opportunities across the whole stack," Dell says, outlining the four functions of power. The article suggests that Base's ultimate goal is to become the largest energy company in the world, potentially surpassing giants like Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil.
This section is where McCormick's analysis becomes most speculative, linking the energy stack to the emerging needs of artificial intelligence infrastructure. The author notes that Ribbit Capital, a lead investor, has adopted this framework to categorize companies in the energy and intelligence sectors. "And then we're going to take that massive Capability Cannon and we're going to point it at AI," Dell states. This connection is timely and resonant, as the intersection of energy and computing is becoming the defining economic challenge of the decade. However, the leap from residential batteries to owning the generation assets required to power AI data centers is a massive strategic pivot that requires capital and regulatory approval on a scale Base has not yet demonstrated.
Bottom Line
McCormick's strongest argument lies in reframing energy storage not as a niche green product but as the foundational constraint of the entire global economy, a bottleneck that Base is uniquely positioned to break. The piece's greatest vulnerability, however, is its reliance on a Texas-centric success story to predict a global monopoly, underestimating the friction of diverse regulatory environments and the entrenched power of legacy utilities. Readers should watch whether Base can translate its "Capability Cannon" from the unique Texas grid to the complex, regulated markets of the rest of the country.