Sam Altman-backed Exowatt wants to power AI with hot rocks

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00:00Sam Altman-backed Exowatt wants to power AI with hot rocks.

00:05When Hannan Hoppe first set out to tackle what people are now calling the AI power

00:10crisis, that pesky problem where data centers want more electricity than the planet feels

00:16comfortable giving, he fixated on a single magic number, one cent per kilowatt hour.

00:22Hoppe, co-founder and CEO of Exowatt, says the path there involved piles of sketches and

00:29prototypes that looked nothing alike, think less Apple design iteration, and more garage

00:35inventor energy.

00:37Can this be cheaper, lighter, less annoying to maintain?

00:41Roughly the size of a shipping container, with a transparent awning that makes it look like

00:45a greenhouse decided to cosplay as industrial machinery.

00:50Inside, though, is where Exowatt thinks the future of clean energy lives.

00:55The company has quietly raised another $50 million, an extension of its already hefty

01:00$70 million.

01:03Series A from April, TechCrunch learned.

01:06Investors include MVP Ventures, 8090 Industries, and a whole venture capital roll call of acronyms.

01:15Even Sam Altman is in the mix.

01:17Hoppe wasn't planning to raise more, but, as he puts it, strong momentum changed his mind.

01:24Each P3 unit uses lenses to focus sunlight into a beam hot enough to warm a proprietary brick.

01:31Blow hot air over it, funnel that heat into a sterling engine, and boom, electricity.

01:37Add more boxes.

01:39These thermal batteries can hold heat for up to five days.

01:43To hit that mythical one-cent milestone, Exowatt needs to manufacture P3 units by the millions.

01:50They already have a backlog of about 10 million units, representing 90 gigawatt hours of capacity.

01:56Hoppe argues their small modular design is the secret sauce missing from past solar thermal attempts.

02:03Will it work everywhere?

02:05No.

02:06Does it need lots of sun and lots of land?

02:09Yes.

02:10But fortunately for Exowatt, so do modern data centers, and those are popping up like mushrooms after rain.

02:18We are not running short of any projects, Hoppe says.

02:21You