The Kraken–Base Moment

Kraken drops a casual $10–15B IPO whisper and leaves the investor world gasping. Two weeks later, Base Power - a two-year-old startup - raises $1 billion from a16z and a stack of generalist VCs who, until now, barely tolerated the phrase “climate tech”.

What’s happening? Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) have gone from an obscure acronym - still ranking well below Visitor Parking Pass - to a hot asset class, especially as AI’s insatiable hunger for energy provides the crisis VPP companies were waiting for.

In the race to mass-market adoption Kraken and Base represent two starkly different paths.

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Kraken: The Horizontal SaaS Bet‍

A classic enterprise play: sell CRM and operations software to utilities, then bolt on innovative VPP capabilities later. It’s clean, it scales, and it works outwardly from deep in the plumbing.

The opportunity? Massive customer base, high margins, and a low-CAPEX route into flexibility markets. The risk? CRMs don't build VPPs; cross-functional teams at utilities do. And some utilities move, well, rather slowly.

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Base Power: The Vertical Full-Stack Play

‍Base is in a hurry, it seems. They’re building everything: batteries, installs, software, trading. It's hard, messy, operationally insane - and probably the only way to actually move.

The opportunity? Full-stack control, direct access to the home, and real flexibility from day one. The risk? High CAC, regulatory landmines (outside of Texas), and the chaos of stitching together hardware, software, field ops, and trading under one roof. Swell Energy tried a similar path. Swell is now in Chapter 11.

Who will win in this Reformation drive for the energy market: Kraken as Luther (trying to reform the utility institution from within) or Base as Calvin (building a new energy church, one battery at a time)?

Depends on what breaks first: utility inertia or regulatory friction. If utilities (people and culture) change faster than regulators, Kraken wins. If not, the verticals will eat their lunch - even if they burn a few billion wrestling with state regulators.

At Beebop, we cheer both companies and hope to win regardless of which way this market goes. Enabling both utilities, traders, OEMs, and installers as they compete for mass adoption.
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Either way, VPPs have outgrown us energy geeks - the market is well-funded, moving fast, and coming to you soon.

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<sup>1. See David Peterson’s interesting position on slow-adoption areas like energy in the era of AI.  
2. Europe’s competitive retail markets have birthed their own emerging rockets: Enpal and 1KOMMA5.
3. Kraken was incubated at Octopus, so it’s somewhat reversed. The core question remains: how much impact can a customer flex platform have without owning the people or the culture?</sup>