Happy Sunday!
Before we get to this week’s deals, an invitation for the chief executives out there: I am holding my final CEO Masterclass of the year November 11–13 and have a few spots left.
Come join the November cohort at Texas CEO Ranch, connect with fellow CEOs, and go into the holiday season with your plan for 2027 in place. You can download the CEO Masterclass brochure or email me at joel@xpertloop.ai to secure your spot.
After this analysis from pH Partners, we will get to this week’s activity, which includes a San Antonio racing-fuel company buying a distillery and getting into the spirits business.
Texas Power Stack: Branch Energy, Mazama Energy & Licube
Three tangentially related financings tied to Texas this week ($33M, $135M, and roughly $8.55M sold) land on three different rungs of the same ladder: generation, bridge storage, and materials. Investors are making three separate bets on the same premise: that AI-driven electricity demand is outrunning grid buildout faster than new supply, storage, or materials capacity can be added.
Houston-based Branch Energy announced a $33M Series B on Sept. 15, led by Piva Capital and Clean Energy Ventures, with Active Impact Investments, Whitecap Venture Partners, and existing backers Prelude Ventures, Zero Infinity Partners and Inovia Capital. The round follows a $10.8M Series A in August 2024.
Two days later, Mazama Energy, based in Frisco with a project in Oregon, announced an oversubscribed $135M Series B led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital. ConocoPhillips and Shell Ventures joined the round, while Khosla Ventures and Gates Frontier returned.
Austin-based Licube, a Greentown Houston member, filed a Form D on Sept. 15 reporting $8.55M sold toward a $12M offering from 26 investors. The financing is separate from a $6M seed round announced in April 2025.
The companies are addressing different parts of the same infrastructure challenge. Branch is a bridge-power bet, deploying batteries at existing sites in days instead of waiting through a multi-year interconnection queue. Mazama is a generation bet, targeting baseload power from superhot rock and 15 MWe per well by 2027. Licube is a supply-chain bet focused on domestic high-purity lithium processing.
The scale of the underlying demand helps explain the activity. EIA figures show developers planning 12.9 GW of utility-scale battery storage additions in Texas in 2026, 53% of the planned U.S. total. ERCOT’s April 2026 preliminary forecast puts regional demand at roughly 367,790 MW by 2032, although that includes proposed loads that may not all be built.
The trend is familiar to pH through its multiple years of work advising ZincFive on its late-stage capital raises as it heads towards a SPAC transaction (announced in mid-2026). Branch and Mazama are selling into new or bridge capacity: more electrons, delivered faster. ZincFive’s nickel-zinc chemistry solves a different problem: safe, immediate backup power within a data center environment that is increasingly stressed by AI computing demands.
The macro cadence is worth monitoring: whether AI-driven data-center buildout keeps accelerating and fueling capital formation through the entire power stack. Additional AI-adjacent IPOs will continue to test investors’ appetite to fund infrastructure growth stories with additional capital, while regulatory moves on interconnection, permitting and large-load rules could accelerate or choke off demand. Rate moves, credit availability and hyperscaler capex guidance will also signal whether this pace of raises is durable or cresting.
—Analysis by pH Partners
pH Partners is an Austin-based boutique investment bank focused on Healthcare, Technology, and Consumer markets. Learn more at phpartners.com.
This material is for general information and educational purposes only. Information is based on data gathered from what we believe are reliable sources. It is not guaranteed as to accuracy, does not purport to be complete and is not intended to be used as a primary basis for investment decisions.
Greater Texas Market
Island (Dallas), a developer of an enterprise browser for secure workplace application access, raised $400M in a Series F led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Insight Partners, Prysm Capital, Coatue Management, Alta Park Capital, and others. Approximately $1.13B raised to date.
Symplr (Houston), a provider of healthcare operations software for provider data and workforce management, secured a $175M preferred equity investment from Clearlake Capital Group and Charlesbank Capital Partners as part of a broader debt restructuring.
