In this week's issue:

  • Zach Dell's home battery startup just tripled to a $12B valuation in eight months — and the data center play is the whole story
  • Dell Technologies posted the most spectacular quarter in its history, 757% AI server revenue growth, and is voting to move its legal home to Texas on June 25
  • SpaceX drops $855M on Bastrop County to consolidate all Starlink kit production in Texas
  • Austin City Council just created a path for towers taller than anything in the state — developer skepticism is real, but the policy architecture for supertall Austin is now on paper
  • Willie Nelson, age 93, released his 79th solo studio album — and yes, the numbers get stranger from there

Let's get into it.

Top Stories

Base Power Is Raising at $12 Billion — And the Data Center Play Explains Why

Austin-based home battery startup Base Power is in talks to raise a new funding round at a $12 billion valuation led by Ribbit Capital — tripling its October 2025 Series C valuation of $4 billion in under eight months. The Information broke the exclusive Thursday, and the framing was precise: the company is "attracting investor interest as grid strain and data center demand reshape the energy market." That sentence is the entire thesis. Base Power, co-founded by Zach Dell (CEO) and Justin Lopas (COO), installs home batteries at near-zero upfront cost — $695-$995 install fee, $19-$29/month — but never sells a single unit. Every battery stays on Base's balance sheet, exactly like a telecom tower operator owns its towers. The company then aggregates those units into a virtual power plant (VPP) through ERCOT's Aggregate Distributed Energy Resource program, charging batteries during cheap overnight periods and selling power back into the grid when prices spike. What changed the math dramatically: AI data centers create predictable, intense demand spikes that make ERCOT's notorious price volatility both more extreme and more tradeable. The data center boom is Base Power's arbitrage engine — and Austin is the epicenter of both.

The business model is capital-intensive for the operator and essentially free for the customer, which is why investor conviction compounds as the fleet scales. At the time of the Series C in October 2025, Base Power had raised $1 billion led by Addition, was installing 40 battery systems per day, and was already maxing out the ERCOT ADER pilot program's 20MW cap. By May 2026, the company signed a 40MW partnership with Austin Energy — the city's own utility drawing on Base Power's battery grid during peak demand events. The $12 billion round has not closed; all reporting is talks. But Ribbit Capital, Micky Malka's firm historically known for fintech bets, leading this round signals something important: distributed energy infrastructure is starting to look like the kind of software-driven, network-effects business Ribbit was built to fund. Factory One, Base Power's first manufacturing plant, is a 90,000-square-foot facility at the old Austin American-Statesman printing press site near the Congress Avenue Bridge — planned for 4 GWh per year at full capacity. The old media economy, physically replaced by the new energy-tech economy, on the same patch of downtown Austin real estate. The metaphor writes itself. Zach Dell said it directly at the Series C: "Right now, we're in a capacity crunch — everyone needs capacity. We install capacity faster and cheaper than really anyone out there." At $12 billion, investors are betting that statement ages extremely well.

Sources: The Information / @theinformation, Base Power Series C press release — Business Wire, Canary Media Series C deep dive

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Dell Just Posted the Best Quarter in Its History — And It's Moving to Texas

Dell Technologies posted Q1 FY27 revenue of $43.8 billion, up 88% year-over-year — the company's fastest growth rate since returning to public markets in 2018. AI-optimized server revenue hit $16.1 billion, up 757% year-over-year. Dell booked $24.4 billion in AI orders in the quarter and exited with a $51.3 billion AI backlog. Full-year AI revenue guidance was raised to $60 billion, up from $50 billion in February, implying roughly 144% annual AI revenue growth from an already massive base. EPS came in at $4.86 adjusted versus $2.94 expected — a 65% earnings beat, one of the largest by any major technology company in recent memory. The stock surged 32.76% Friday, its best single trading day in company history, and is up more than 234% year-to-date. Trump became a Dell shareholder in Q1 2026 and told White House attendees to "go out and buy a Dell." A Pentagon deal is in the mix. The numbers are so large they require a moment to sit with: Round Rock, Texas — twenty miles north of downtown Austin — is now the address of the biggest AI server company on earth.

The earnings are the headline. The Texas reincorporation is the story. On May 4, Dell's board unanimously approved redomestication from Delaware to Texas, with a shareholder vote scheduled for June 25, 2026 at the Annual Meeting. Michael Dell's statement: "From my dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984 to our headquarters today in Round Rock, Texas has given Dell what every great company needs to grow — extraordinary talent, world-class research universities, and a business environment that lets us build for the long term. Texas is where Dell has innovated, expanded, and invested for more than four decades, and bringing our legal home to Texas reflects that." The move places Dell in explicit company with Tesla and Andreessen Horowitz in what's being called "Dexit" — the corporate exodus from Delaware's legal jurisdiction to Texas. On May 28, Exxon Mobil shareholders voted approximately 70% in favor of redomiciling from New Jersey to Texas. Delaware's governor is publicly insisting incorporation numbers are "better than ever," but the companies with the most gravity are voting with their charters. Dell started in a UT dorm room, built its global headquarters in Round Rock, and is now closing a 42-year loop by planting its legal flag in the state that made it. What the AI earnings and the Dexit move share: Texas is not a backup plan. It's the headquarters of the new economy.

Sources: Austin American-Statesman — Dell earnings, Dell Technologies investor relations — reincorporation announcement

Weird Austin

One Thing

Base Power is building the energy infrastructure. Dell is building the AI infrastructure. The capital markets just noticed both in the same week. Austin is not waiting for permission.

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