Critical Loop Raises $26M to Break America's Crippling Gridlock

LOS ANGELES, CA – April 13, 2026 – Industrial power solutions company Critical Loop announced it has closed a $26 million Series A funding round to accelerate its attack on one of the most significant barriers to American economic growth: the multi-year logjam for grid connection. The investment, co-led by Conifer Infrastructure Partners and Hanover, brings the company's total committed funding to $49 million and will fuel the expansion of its rapid-deployment microgrid platform.

As industries from AI data centers to electric vehicle charging and advanced manufacturing face staggering wait times for electricity, Critical Loop is delivering power in days or weeks, not years. The new capital will bolster key partnerships, including a major project at San Diego International Airport, and is supported by a strategic supply agreement for U.S.-made batteries with LG Energy Solution Vertech.

The Billion-Dollar Bottleneck

The urgency for Critical Loop's solution is rooted in a nationwide gridlock crisis. Across the United States, an estimated 2,600 gigawatts of new energy and industrial projects are stuck in interconnection queues—a backlog nearly 1.7 times the entire installed generating capacity of the country's power grid. The median time for a project to move from a connection request to commercial operation has ballooned to five years, a stark increase from two years just over a decade ago.

This "multi-year, gigawatt-scale market failure" has dire economic consequences. For high-growth sectors, the delays are existential. Access to grid power has become the single biggest constraint on the development of new AI data centers, which have voracious and immediate energy needs. Similarly, the build-out of commercial EV charging fleets is being throttled by utilities unable to provide service for years. For developers and industrial tenants, these delays translate into stalled projects and lost revenue.

"The industrial real estate market in Northern California runs on timelines that cannot afford to sit idle for years," said Greg Matter, Vice Chairman, Head of Advanced Manufacturing, JLL. "When Critical Loop can get a facility connected in weeks or months, that changes what developers and tenants can commit to."

Federal and regional grid operators have begun implementing reforms, such as FERC Order 2023, to move from a "first-come, first-served" to a "first-ready, first-served" model. However, the sheer volume of the backlog and the physical limitations of aging infrastructure mean that innovative, private-sector solutions are essential to bridge the gap.

A Flexible Fix for a Rigid Problem

Critical Loop's approach circumvents the traditional, slow-moving process of permanent grid upgrades. The company has developed a full-stack hardware and software platform that combines battery storage, flexible generation, and its proprietary Cygnus software-defined power controller into a single, deployable microgrid.

"In just a couple of years, we've built a software and hardware stack that has the potential to accelerate time to power from years to days, and with this team, we believe we can keep doing things that were previously considered impossible," said Bala Ramamurthy, Co-Founder and CEO, Critical Loop.

The cornerstone of this platform is the CLB-5100, a scalable, integrated 1-megawatt battery system. These modular units can be deployed rapidly to a customer site, connecting to existing grid infrastructure, on-site generation like solar, or operating as a standalone power source. This allows businesses to become operational immediately while the utility works on permanent infrastructure upgrades in the background. Crucially, the systems are relocatable, allowing them to be moved to other constrained areas once permanent power is established.

This model of providing an immediate, real solution is what attracted lead investors. "Grid interconnection queues are limiting industrial growth, and the current solutions are mostly slow to deploy and inflexible, which does not meet current need,” said Nick Stork, Founder and Managing Partner at Conifer Infrastructure Partners. “Critical Loop is working on a timeline that actually matches what customers are dealing with."

Joe Malchow, Founder and General Partner at HNVR Technology Investment Management, echoed this sentiment, highlighting the technological leap. “Critical Loop’s CLB-5100 speeds time-to-power and buys down net power cost – adding resilience to the grid while unlocking predictable costs for companies whose growth is at stake. This is quite literally the prerequisite to a new industrial revolution.”

Proven in the Field

The company has already validated its model across several high-profile and demanding use cases. At San Diego International Airport, the busiest single-runway airport in the U.S., Critical Loop won a competitive bid to manage and optimize an 11 MW load using a combination of permanent and movable battery storage, ensuring power reliability during a massive modernization project.

For Terawatt Infrastructure, an operator of charging depots for commercial EV fleets, Critical Loop’s solution was transformative. Faced with a five-year wait for a 10 MW connection from the local utility, Terawatt was able to secure over 4 MW of flexible capacity across two sites in just a few months, enabling them to launch operations and serve customers.

Other successes include keeping a manufacturing facility for the company Cover fully operational for eight months during an extended utility outage and deploying two hybrid microgrids to remote Mojave test facilities within days of receiving the request. These deployments are backed by a robust supply chain, anchored by the agreement with LG Energy Solution Vertech for domestically produced batteries, a key factor in ensuring project timelines and quality.

A Blueprint for National Expansion

While its current operations are centered in California, Critical Loop's impact is already shaping policy. The company was cited directly in a landmark February 2026 ruling by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). This decision compels major utilities like PG&E and SCE to create standardized, tariffed "Flexible Service Connection" options for customers in capacity-constrained areas.

This regulatory tailwind effectively creates a formal market for the exact services Critical Loop provides, validating its business model and creating a clear procedural path for customers to adopt its solutions. It establishes a blueprint that could be replicated in other states facing similar grid congestion challenges.

With the new injection of capital, the company plans to expand its operations into other territories where industrial electrification and the data center boom are colliding with an unprepared grid. As the demand for power continues to outpace the development of traditional infrastructure, Critical Loop is positioned not just as a temporary fix, but as a core component of a more agile, resilient, and responsive energy future.