Fuse Energy: The full-stack energy major powering the age of AI

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Hi 👋, this is the Today in AI Newsletter: The weekly newsletter bringing you one step closer to building your own startup.

We analyze a cool, industry-shaping AI startup every week, with a full breakdown of what they do, how they make money, how much they’ve raised, and the opportunity ahead.

Let’s get to the good stuff in this email:

• 💡 This startup is building an energy major that builds solar and batteries, using AI forecasting to balance generation and demand in real time.
  

• 📈 They’ve installed energy in 150,000+ households and blasted past $300M+ ARR, up 7× YoY growth in Q3 2025.
  

• 🚀 They’ve raised $100M+ to date, including a $78M seed, hitting unicorn status at a $1B+ valuation in less than 3 years.

So what’s the startup and who are the founders behind it? 📈

Fuse Energy was founded by Alan Chang and Charles Orr in 2022 to build the modern energy major - full-stack from generation ➝ trading ➝ retail.

Think Tesla Energy + Shell, but with AI at the core and a promise to reinvest 100% of profits into more renewables. ⚡

They build utility-scale solar, wind, and batteries, run in-house trading to place power on the grid at the optimal second, then sell directly to consumers and SMBs. 🤖

The mission is simple: make energy abundant and cheap for an AI-powered world where data centers are the new factories. 💸

Backstory 👀

Alan was born in Hong Kong, and went to school at Cranbrook (Kent).

He ended up studying Physics at Imperial College London.

He graduated and spotted Revolut’s first TechCrunch article. He instantly cold-emailed Nikolay Storonsky who replied in 5 minutes.

Nikolay interviewed him, and hired him the same day. This was at a time when Revolut only had between 15,000 and 20,000 users… 📈 

As employee #3, Alan did everything - answering angry customer tickets, building ops, product, and revenue. 

He rose to CRO, soaking up a culture of “never settle”: : if you’re not #1, it’s not good enough. He also hired A-players fast (same-day offers were normal).

Alan ended up leaving Revolut in 2022 to address what he saw as the most important global challenge: climate change and the energy economy.

The lightbulb moment came while digging into a battery trading company making massive profits.

If solar/wind were ~4× cheaper than gas, why were consumer bills still rising?

Answer: Energy was a fragmented, slow, broker-heavy industry that lost  its urgency. 🧩

So Alan and Charles made the call: start from zero. Build generation, run trading, install home hardware, and own the retail relationship. 

No middlemen. Just software + speed.

The Hustle 🤑

Fuse (formerly Tesseract) went vertical from day one.

They engineered, procured, and built their first solar site in-house, cutting CAPEX/ MWp by ~30% vs. the market. ⚙️

They wrote their own trading stack, timing bids to the second and capturing margins others leaked to brokers.

They launched D2C energy with variable, fixed, EV, and multi-rate tariffs, with 24/7/365 support. 

Sign-up takes <3 minutes, with 30-minute forecasts and multi-property support. 🏠

When power prices go negative on quiet weekends, Fuse can switch off their solar to avoid losses and nudge retail customers to use more, effectively making money twice.

This is only possible with true vertical integration. 🧠

They ship 10+ releases/day, hit break-even, and keep margins ~8× better than competitors. 

Every pound saved is reinvested into more solar and batteries. ♻️

Average households now save £150–£200+ per year, and Fuse has been ~£100 cheaper than the UK energy price cap.

Stats 📊

Today, the business has reached break-even and reports margins ~8x the industry average.

Build costs are roughly 30% lower in CAPEX per megawatt-peak than the market; construction takes about 3 months once approved, though planning can add up to 2 years.

The team ships 10+ software releases per day and runs a full-stack platform for trading, forecasting, and retail.

💸 They’re currently doing $300M+ in ARR, up 7x YoY, and just 3 years from launch.

🚀 They hit 50k users this summer, 100k by August, and now have over 150k households using Fuse Energy.

💰️ On September 7th 2022, Fuse Energy raised a $78M seed led by Balderton & Lakestar with participation from Accel, BoxGroup,  Chris Sacca, Creandum, Edward Cooper, John Doran, Lowercarbon Capital, Martin Mignot, Nico Rosberg, Ribbit Capital, Tom Stafford

Since, they’ve raised another $22M+ in seed extensions from Anatoly Yakovenko, Multicoin Capital, and Ryan Merket, bringing their total raised to $100M+

What’s coming next ⚙️

Plugs, your AI assistant: A copilot that helps you manage energy usage, level up, and earn prizes.

Smart Home, Smarter Rewards: Fuse will orchestrate devices (batteries, EVs, thermostats) to save money, earn rewards, and keep comfort.

Export: Track solar + battery performance and earn more when exporting back to the grid.

Virtual Power Plant (VPP): A crypto-powered network of home batteries, thermostats, solar, and EV chargers that shifts load automatically during grid stress.

Tokenization: Turn your bill into an asset: one token = one watt, so anyone can buy/sell “virtual power generators” with liquidity and portability when moving home.

Installations Platform: The Amazon Prime of installs for solar, EV chargers, and home batteries - click, schedule, done.

Service & Optimization: An Optimizer for batteries and an “AppleCare”-style service plan for your devices.

Why this works 💸

Energy is a margin stack. Every middleman takes a slice.

Fuse removes the middle, owns the physics and the software, and routes savings between P&L and customer bills.

When AI drives massive new demand, the winners will be those who can add supply fast, price smart, and program the grid like code.

Before You Go 👋

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