Verse, a San Francisco-based energy infrastructure platform for the AI economy, has raised $54 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The Aria platform orchestrates on-site battery storage and flexible assets to get data centers online up to three years faster by bypassing grid queues. The capital will expand Dispatch Intelligence deployments and onboard over 100 sites in the next 12 months.
AI Power Bottleneck Draws Fresh Capital
The timing aligns with a surge in energy-tech funding for data centers. GridBeyond raised $56 million Series C in April 2024, while Emerald AI secured roughly $42.5 million across seed rounds in 2025. Verse differentiates by focusing on interconnection acceleration rather than workload throttling or demand response alone.
Interconnection Queues Stall AI Expansion
US interconnection queues hold roughly 2,600 GW of projects with median wait times exceeding five years, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data. Verse estimates 700 data centers above 50 MW remain stuck in these queues, representing over $1 trillion in potential missed revenue at current GPU rental rates. Traditional grid upgrades cannot keep pace with hyperscaler demand that Goldman Sachs projects will double US data center power needs from 31 GW in 2025 to 66 GW by 2027.
Dispatch Intelligence Bypasses Grid Delays
Verse built Aria as a unified intelligence layer that manages energy contracts, market prices, telemetry, and emissions across portfolios. Dispatch Intelligence, launched with the round, orchestrates behind-the-meter batteries and flexible generation to present a flexible load to the grid. Unlike competitors that curtail AI workloads, the system keeps compute running at full capacity while the grid sees dynamic flexibility.
As CEO Seyed Madaeni stated:
"The race to AI is now a race to power, and developers are losing time they don't have."
The platform integrates with NVIDIA's DSX AI Factory reference design and partners with Calibrant Energy for financing and operating on-site infrastructure.
Bessemer and NVIDIA Validate Infrastructure Thesis
Bessemer led the oversubscribed round with participation from GV, NVIDIA, and Norrsken VC. NVIDIA's dual role as investor and integration partner signals technical alignment with AI infrastructure needs. The round follows a $20.5 million Series A led by GV in 2024, bringing total disclosed funding above $74 million.
Energy Management Market Scales Rapidly
The broader energy management systems market is projected to grow from $68.8 billion in 2026 to $158.6 billion by 2033 at a 12.7 percent CAGR, per Grand View Research. Energy management software alone is expected to reach $44.31 billion by 2035 at 13.4 percent CAGR according to Precedence Research. Demand response systems are expanding even faster at 27 percent CAGR. Verse's approach combines interconnection acceleration, real-time dispatch, and portfolio analytics in one platform, contrasting with narrower tools from AutoGrid, Nira Energy, and BluWave-ai.
Founders Bring Proven Grid Software Pedigree
Co-founders Seyed Madaeni and Matt Penfold previously built Autobidder at Tesla and Mosaic at Fluence, two of the largest energy storage software platforms deployed at scale. Their domain expertise in market bidding and grid flexibility directly informs Verse's pivot from enterprise PPA management to AI data center power delivery.
Next 12 Months Target 100+ Deployments
With the new funding, Verse plans to onboard more than 100 sites over the next 12 months while deepening integrations across 21 wholesale markets already covered by the platform.