【文章标题】:Base Power Company: Chapter 3 【文章标题】:Base Power公司:第三章
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Hi friends 👋 ,
There are only two companies on which I’ve written multiple Deep Dives.
嗨,朋友们👋,
在我多次撰写深度长文的公司中,只有两家。
The first is
Ramp
, which I first wrote about when it was
valued at $300 million
, then again when it was
valued at 1.6) billion
, and then
multiple
times
since
. Today, it is valued at $44 billion.
第一家是
Ramp
,我第一次写它时,公司
估值3亿美元
,后来再次撰写时
估值已达10亿(和16亿)美元
,此后又写了
多次
。如今,它的估值已达440亿美元。
The second is
Base Power Company
, which I first wrote about when it was valued at $300 million (
Chapter 1
), then again when it was valued at $1 billion (
Chapter 2
). Today, the company is announcing that it has raised 12 billion pre-money valuation, bringing its valuation to $13 billion.
第二家是
Base Power公司
,我第一次写它时估值3亿美元(
第一章
),后来再次撰写时估值已达10亿美元(
第二章
)。今天,公司宣布已完成一轮10亿美元融资,投前估值120亿美元,使公司估值达到130亿美元。
In the intro to the last Ramp piece,
Ramp at $1 Billion
, I wrote that “One of my goals for this newsletter (and Not Boring Capital) is to find a handful of generational companies as early as possible, write their story in chapters over time, and then publish the whole thing as a book when they IPO.”
在上一篇关于Ramp的文章
《Ramp:估值10亿美元》
的引言中,我写道:“这份通讯(以及Not Boring Capital)的目标之一,就是尽可能早地发现少数几家世代级公司,随时间推移分章节书写它们的故事,然后在它们IPO时将全部内容集结成书出版。”
That is certainly my aim with Base Power Company, which I’ve both invested in and plan to keep writing about through and beyond IPO.
这无疑也是我对Base Power公司的目标——我既是这家公司的投资者,也计划持续书写它的故事,直到IPO之后。
This is the third chapter in the Book of Base. There will be many more to come.
这是《Base之书》的第三章。未来还会有更多章节。
If you want to help write the Base Story, and I think you should, because I think it’s going to be one of the most important of our generation, my advice is to get yourself on the next flight down to Austin and
join them
.
如果你想参与书写Base的故事——我认为你应该这么做,因为我相信这将成为我们这一代人最重要的故事之一——我的建议是,赶紧搭下一班飞机去奥斯汀,
加入他们
。
Let’s get to it.
让我们开始吧。
One Friday night earlier this summer, Base Power Company CEO
Zach Dell
and
Ribbit Capital founder Micky Malka
agreed to terms on a 13 billion post-money valuation. By Saturday, the round, co-led by Ribbit, Valor Equity Partners, Addition, and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group, was fully subscribed. By Sunday, it was multiples oversubscribed.
今年夏初的一个周五晚上,Base Power公司CEO
扎克·戴尔
和
Ribbit Capital创始人米基·马尔卡
就一轮10亿美元的D轮融资达成协议,投后估值130亿美元。到周六,这轮由Ribbit、Valor Equity Partners、Addition和摩根大通战略投资集团联合领投的融资已被全额认购。到周日,超额认购已达数倍。
Ribbit: Base Power Napkin Ribbit:Base Power餐巾纸
$13 billion is, to be sure, a hefty price tag for a toddler, no matter how precocious. Base is less than three years old, and it is now the second most valuable energy startup in the world, behind Helion, and the most valuable that is selling a product today.
诚然,130亿美元的估值对于一个”幼儿”来说,无论多么早慧,都是一笔不菲的价格。Base成立不到三年,如今已是全球估值第二高的能源初创公司,仅次于Helion,也是当前估值最高且已有产品在售的能源公司。
It is a bet, I think, that Base can become the largest energy company in the world.
我认为,这是一场豪赌——赌Base能够成为全球最大的能源公司。
That seems crazy, I know, but it’s been my working thesis for a while - that Base has the opportunity to do to energy what SpaceX did to space, what Anduril is doing to defense - namely, win a large, old, incumbent-dominated market.
我知道这听起来很疯狂,但这段时间以来一直是我的核心论点——Base有机会在能源领域做到SpaceX在航天领域所做的事,正如Anduril在国防领域正在做的事——即赢下一个庞大、古老、由在位者主导的市场。
It’s also the company’s ambition.
这也是这家公司的雄心所在。
Last November, before Base had decided to expand to Chicago, before it had produced its first Base Core, Zach came to New York to do a fireside at Thrive Capital’s office.
去年十一月,在Base决定扩展到芝加哥之前,在它生产出第一台Base Core之前,扎克来到纽约,在Thrive Capital的办公室做了一场炉边对谈。
After the conversation, we were chatting with a small group and someone asked whether there was still upside in going to work at Base, to which Zach replied, “Base can become a $400 billion company.”
对谈结束后,我们和一小群人聊天,有人问现在加入Base是否还有上升空间,扎克回答说:“Base可以成为一家4000亿美元的公司。”
It was offhand and automatic, but what struck me was that Base had just closed a 4 billion. As the valuation grew, the ambition did too, at exactly a 100:1 ratio. I suspect no matter how highly valued Base becomes, the goal will always be 100x higher.
这句话脱口而出、自然而然,但让我震撼的是,Base就在一个月前刚刚完成了一轮10亿美元融资,估值40亿美元。随着估值的增长,雄心也在增长,恰好以100:1的比例同步攀升。我猜想,无论Base的估值变得多高,目标总会是它的100倍。
When we caught up last week, I asked Zach about that conversation at Thrive, and whether now that investors had valued the company at 1.3 trillion company in the limit.
上周我们叙旧时,我问扎克关于Thrive那次对话的事,以及既然投资者现在给公司估值130亿美元,在他心中,Base的终极上限是否已变成1.3万亿美元的公司。
He didn’t remember saying $400 billion at Thrive, and said that he doesn’t necessarily think about it that way… before laying out exactly how it could happen:
他不记得在Thrive说过4000亿美元的话,也说他不一定会以那种方式思考……然后他详细阐述了这一切是如何可能发生的:
I think about it more in terms of the scope, the size, the total opportunity, and how big a part of the energy market we can be.
我更多地是从范围、规模、总机会的角度来思考,以及我们能在能源市场中占据多大的份额。
A trillion dollar company is pretty big today. I don’t think it’ll be that big in 10 years.
如今,万亿美元公司已经相当庞大了。我不认为10年后它还会那么庞大。
So I mean if you believe that energy is going to remain one of the world’s largest industries, or even get bigger as a percentage of total GDP, and you look at all the largest energy companies in the market, you stack rank them by market cap and you stare at it and you say, ‘Which one of these can be trillion dollar market caps? And you think okay there might be one or two in here.’
所以我的意思是,如果你相信能源仍将是全球最大的行业之一,甚至占GDP的比重还会更大,那么你看看市场上所有最大的能源公司,按市值排序,盯着看,然后说:‘这些公司中哪些能达到万亿美元市值?‘你会想,这里可能有一两家。
And then you look at that list and you’re like, ‘Do we think Base is going to crack this list? And where on it do we think they will be?’ I think we will crack that list and I think we can be near the top over time. I think we will be at the top.
然后你再看看这份名单,你会想:‘我们认为Base能跻身其中吗?我们觉得它会排在哪里?‘我认为我们会跻身其中,而且随着时间推移,我们会接近榜首。我认为我们会登顶。
So. Biggest industry in the world. We want to win it. You tell me how big that would be.
所以。全球最大的行业。我们想赢下它。你说那会有多大。
Energy is an enormous industry, and arguably the world’s most important. It sits at the base of everything. The world’s largest energy company today, Saudi Aramco, is worth 650 billion, a cool trillion dollars less. What is remarkable about the energy industry, though, is that there are 18 energy companies worth more than 50 billion. At its current $13 billion valuation, Base would rank 182nd among publicly traded energy companies, between China’s COSCO Shipping Energy and Norway’s Vår Energi.
能源是一个巨大的行业,可以说是世界上最重要的行业。它是一切的基础。当今全球最大的能源公司沙特阿美,市值1.7万亿美元。埃克森美孚以6500亿美元位居第二,整整少了1万亿美元。然而,能源行业的非凡之处在于,有18家能源公司市值超过1000亿美元,55家超过500亿美元。按目前130亿美元的估值,Base在上市能源公司中排名第182位,介于中国的中远海能(COSCO Shipping Energy)和挪威的Vår Energi之间。
Data from CompaniesMarketCap as of 7/30/26 数据来源:CompaniesMarketCap,截至2026年7月30日
This is a top-down view of the situation, basically just confirming that it is indeed very possible to build a very large energy company. What’s notable about the list, though, is just how old the companies on it are. These companies were largely built around the winning assets of the previous energy system: oil fields, refineries, pipelines, tankers, centralized generation, poles, and wires.
这是自上而下审视这个行业,基本上只是确认了一个事实:确实有可能建立一家非常庞大的能源公司。不过,这份名单的显著之处在于,这些公司有多”老”。它们大多围绕上一代能源系统的制胜资产而建:油田、炼油厂、管道、油轮、集中式发电、电线杆和电缆。
The energy transition that’s been underway has already created new bottlenecks – the grid struggles matching variable supply with unpredictable demand, for example – and therefore new valuable positions.
正在进行的能源转型已经创造了新的瓶颈——例如,电网难以将波动的供给与不可预测的需求进行匹配——也因此创造了新的高价值位置。
Then the most ravenous consumer of electrons in history entered the market in the form of data centers. If a new energy winner is going to be born, now would seem to be the time.
然后,历史上最贪婪的电子消费者以数据中心的形式进入了市场。如果一个新的能源赢家将要诞生,现在似乎正是时候。
The question is: how? In an industry dominated by well-established and literally well-resourced companies, how might a new entrant break into the top group, or even take the top spot?
问题是:怎么做到?在一个由根基深厚、资源雄厚的公司主导的行业里,一个新进入者如何才能跻身顶尖阵营,甚至登顶?
This is the question I tackled in
Power in the Age of Intelligence
in February. My hypothesis was that a company needs to identify the constraint holding its industry back and focus everything on breaking it in order to win the High Ground with a scarce, defensible asset. Then, use that position and its capabilities to integrate outward.
这就是我在二月份的
《智能时代的电力》
一文中探讨的问题。我的假设是:一家公司需要识别制约其行业发展的瓶颈,集中一切力量突破它,从而凭借一种稀缺且可防御的资产赢得”制高点”。然后,利用这个位置及其能力向外整合。
This is what Standard Oil did, and Ford Motor Company, Carnegie Steel, and Swift Meats. The case study I used to show this idea in motion was, of course,
Base Power Company
.
这就是标准石油、福特汽车、卡内基钢铁和Swift Meats所走过的路。我用来说明这一理念的实际案例,当然就是
Base Power公司
。
Base picked the right energy bottleneck - the grid - and the right technology to unblock it - batteries. They picked the right place to put the batteries, right next to homes, in the right starting state, Texas. They vertically integrated, assembled the right team to own each chunk it bit off, and got to work.
Base选择了正确的能源瓶颈——电网——以及正确的解锁技术——电池。他们选择了正确的位置来部署电池——就在家庭旁边——以及正确的起步之州——德克萨斯州。他们进行了垂直整合,组建了合适的团队来负责每一块业务,然后开始干活。
“In 2023,” Zach told me, “we had this very opinionated view that batteries were this unique unlock to scaling energy consumption.
“2023年,“扎克告诉我,“我们有一个非常坚定的观点:电池是扩大能源消耗规模的独特解锁方式。
And we thought that in a commodity business where cost is everything, to win, you had to vertically integrate and you had to leverage technology, because you needed to combine those things to get a structural advantage.
我们认为,在一个成本决定一切的大宗商品业务中,要赢,就必须垂直整合,必须利用技术,因为你需要把这两者结合起来才能获得结构性优势。
”
”
With Base Core, Base has won the High Ground: the ability to make the cheapest residential battery and deploy a growing network of them in the most valuable place on the grid, next to homes, starting in Texas, the state where batteries currently make the most sense.
凭借Base Core,Base已经赢得了”制高点”:制造最便宜的家用电池的能力,以及在电网中最有价值的位置——家庭旁边——部署日益增长的电池网络的能力,从电池目前最具经济意义的德克萨斯州起步。
Owning the High Ground doesn’t mean Base has won, of course. Not even close. The High Ground is simply a strategically advantageous position from which to attack (“Job’s nowhere near finished,” Zach confirmed).
当然,占据制高点并不意味着Base已经赢了。还远远不够。制高点只是一个具有战略优势的攻击位置(“工作远未完成,“扎克确认道)。
What it means, though, is that it will be a lot harder for any new entrant, or even any incumbent, to try to attack the bottleneck in the way that Base has, or to try to beat Base at its own game. Their customers will be harder to acquire, their electrons more expensive, and their ability to impact the grid less sophisticated.
但它意味着,任何新进入者,甚至任何在位者,要想像Base那样攻克瓶颈,或者想在Base的赛道上击败Base,都会困难得多。他们的获客会更难,他们的电子会更贵,他们对电网的影响力也会更弱。
As important as the position itself is what Base has learned capturing it.
与位置本身同样重要的是Base在夺取这个位置的过程中所学到的东西。
“Our first three years were basically learning a bunch of hard lessons about how to scale, build a brand, build a team, raise capital, manufacture and design products, optimize the supply chain, and the output of all of that is Base Core,” Zach said.
“我们的头三年基本上是在学习一系列艰难的课程:如何扩张、如何建立品牌、如何组建团队、如何融资、如何制造和设计产品、如何优化供应链,而所有这些的产出就是Base Core,“扎克说。
Base’s young life has been a process of figuring out how to do a really hard thing, earning the right to make it a company capability, using it and other capabilities to do the next really hard thing, and turning
that
into a capability, too.
Base短暂的历史就是一个不断摸索如何完成一件真正困难的事情、赢得将其转化为公司能力的资格、再运用它和其他能力去攻克下一件真正困难的事情、然后将
那件事
也转化为能力的过程。
Collectively, Zach calls all the things Base has learned to do its ”
Capability Cannon
”:
the deployments and engineering and electrical services and manufacturing and brand and balance sheet and policy chops that Base has earned along the way.
扎克将所有Base已经学会做的事情统称为它的”
能力大炮
”:
即Base一路走来所积累的部署能力、工程能力、电气服务能力、制造能力、品牌能力、资产负债表能力和政策能力。
The Capability Cannon is the most important thing Base builds, more important than any single product, as long as the opportunity ahead remains larger than its past accomplishments, which it should for a long time. Base can point its Cannon at the next opportunities it attacks.
能力大炮是Base打造的最重要的东西,比任何单一产品都重要——只要前方的机会仍然大于它过去的成就,而在很长一段时间内都应该是这样。Base可以将其大炮对准它接下来要进攻的机会。
It is already pointing it at new geographies and new customer types.
它已经将大炮对准了新的地域和新的客户类型。
When we last saw Base, in
Chapter 2
, they operated in one state. Now they’re in two, having launched Illinois in June. Back then, fifteen months ago, its regulated utility business existed as one pilot. Last month, more than 50% of its installs were on regulated utility customers’ homes for the first time.
在我们上次写到Base时(
第二章
),他们只在一个州运营。现在他们已经扩展到两个州,六月在伊利诺伊州启动了业务。那时,十五个月前,他们的受监管公用事业业务还只是一个试点项目。上个月,其安装量的50%以上首次落在了受监管公用事业客户的家中。
It learns lessons from these expansions, too, and it will apply them to the next state and the next utility, and the ones after that, until there’s a Base Core on homes in every state, every neighborhood, and maybe even in foreign countries, too.
它也从中吸取了经验教训,并将把这些经验应用到下一个州、下一家公用事业公司,以及之后的更多州和更多公司,直到每个州、每个社区的家中都装上Base Core,甚至可能扩展到海外。
It can also point the Cannon at new products, and at the AI infrastructure buildout.
它还可以将大炮对准新产品,以及AI基础设施建设。
The way Zach sees it, there are four things you can do with