The Naïve Case for Building Alone: The Next Layer of the Energy Transition
We've spent the last decade building the physical foundations of the energy transition. The next decade will be defined by who learns from those assets, coordinates them, and compounds that knowledge into enduring competitive advantage.
There is something profound happening within energy that I don't think we've fully mapped yet.
For the better part of the last decade, the conversation has centered around deployment: more generation, more storage, more transmission, more electrification. The challenge was largely one of physical infrastructure. Build the assets. Connect the grid. Scale deployment.
That challenge isn't disappearing. Nor am I arguing that it should.
But I increasingly think there's a naïve assumption embedded within this narrative. It presumes that the lion’s share of value created during the energy transition will come from building infrastructure alone.
I believe we're entering a new phase of the energy transition—one where the locus of value is beginning to shift to the class of assets that determine how infrastructure is planned, operated, coordinated, and monetized, and I think this shift can already be seen through a bifurcation present in the market.
"Markets don't emerge because everyone shares the same vision. They emerge because enough participants, for different reasons, begin moving in the same direction."
On one side is the new “Gen-Z” of companies building services that optimize operations, forecast demand, manage resources, quantify risk, and help customers make increasingly complex decisions, especially customers at the C-Suite level.
On the other is the infrastructure builders, companies deploying the physical systems that underpin our energy future.
Where I don't see these as competing currents, they are two halves of the same burgeoning ecosystem, and at the present, each possesses something the other lacks.
The intelligence companies are asset-light. They can move quickly, iterate rapidly, and build extraordinary software. Yet their businesses often depend on access to assets they do not own. Their customer relationships are mediated through infrastructure owners, utilities, industrial operators, or developers. Their challenge becomes translating something fundamentally intangible—information—into durable enterprise value.
Infrastructure companies face almost the inverse problem. They own the physical assets. They deploy capital. They build the systems society depends upon. But deployment is expensive. It consumes enormous amounts of capital, management attention, engineering effort, and time. In many cases, the operational intelligence that could fundamentally reshape how those assets perform becomes secondary to the challenge of simply getting projects built.
While I believe there will always be a place for each, I suspect that over the next two to five years the playmakers in this space will be the organizations where these two worlds converge.
That convergence, however, isn't being driven by the supply side alone. It is being pulled into existence by an equally important evolution in demand.
Why? Because the energy system itself is changing.
One of the open secrets among researchers, market operators, utilities, and transmission planners is that today's electricity markets are not tomorrow's electricity markets [1]
Everyone knows change is coming. Few agree on—or even know exactly—what those markets will become. Regardless, that uncertainty is precisely what makes this moment so important.
On the demand side, I am observing two parallel and distinct motivations emerging for why different players are investing in novel energy technology.
The first reflects a vision of what the future energy system could become. Look no further than hyperscale data centers buying up swaths of critical resources, rights-of-way, water rights [2], and generation assets [3]. The race isn't merely about securing electricity. It's about becoming part of the architecture of the future grid itself.
The second reflects the practical realities of operating within today's constraints. Traditional industrial players, district heating networks, and to some extent utilities fall into this category. Their investments are driven by cost stabilization, reliability, and increasingly, decarbonization.
“Numbers explain why the business works today. Platforms explain why and how the business becomes exponentially more valuable tomorrow.”
While their motivations differ, I suspect the collective movement of the visionary and practical will be the catalyzing factor for the change in energy markets we predict in ways neither group could accomplish independently. Markets don't emerge because everyone shares the same vision. They emerge because enough participants, for different reasons, begin moving in the same direction.
As participation broadens, coordination—not deployment alone—becomes the limiting factor.
Hence…
Load shifting,
Demand response,
Operational flexibility,
Redundancy, and
Arbitrage
...will no longer be niche operational considerations. They'll become fundamental drivers of industrial competitiveness and grid resilience.
Out of these operational realities, new markets will emerge around:
Flexible contracting,
Infrastructure hedging,
Dynamic bidding,
Secondary infrastructure markets, and
Increasingly sophisticated methods for managing resource uncertainty
Once this type of flexibility becomes valuable, coordinating that flexibility becomes an intelligence problem.
This is where today's bifurcated supply market begins to converge, as intelligence and infrastructure evolve from complementary products into integrated platforms that meet the needs of this emergent type of demand.
Intelligence becomes synonymous with continuously sensing, interpreting, and optimizing around uncertainty—not simply responding to it. Infrastructure, in turn, becomes the proprietary physical foundation upon which that intelligence is deployed.
The question therefore shifts from who can deploy infrastructure to who can continuously coordinate, improve, and learn from it.
The energy transition thus isn't simply about becoming more electrified. It's about becoming more coordinated across every layer of the energy system.
Every project generates data. Every customer interaction produces information. Every deployment teaches something. Every operational decision creates another signal.
Most companies will collect this information. The exceptional ones will transform it into intelligence that continuously improves the operational infrastructure they build and deploy.
"The first successful product is not the business. It is the instrument through which the business begins learning."
Not dashboards. Not reports. Intelligence.
I want to pause and say that this concept itself is not novel. The Web 2.0 era, coupled with the smartphone revolution, followed a similar trajectory. Infrastructure enabled entirely new layers of intelligence and services. The difference is that we've never seen this kind of transformation applied at scale to critical infrastructure like energy.
Infrastructure remains the foundation.
Intelligence becomes the multiplier.
And this new form factor for critical infrastructure matters well beyond operations—it fundamentally changes how companies should think about fundraising.
Infrastructure has traditionally been sold on technical merit, deployment milestones, and unit economics. Those remain necessary, but they are increasingly insufficient in a landscape evolving this rapidly.
Numbers explain why the business works today. Platforms explain why and how the business becomes exponentially more valuable tomorrow.
Savvy investors are no longer just underwriting today's asset; they're underwriting whether that asset becomes the foundation for an enduring intelligence platform.
The question isn't simply, Can you build this?
It's, What does building this unlock?
What proprietary knowledge will every deployment generate? How does that knowledge compound into the next product, the next service, or the next market?
The winners won't necessarily be those with the single best technology. They'll be the companies capable of operating across multiple layers of the ecosystem.
I believe the companies best positioned to win will share several characteristics. These are the patterns I increasingly find myself looking for when advising founders and evaluating investments:
Companies that deeply understand and work in the policy domain—not merely complying with regulation, but helping shape the frameworks that govern emerging markets. (Proxima Fusion.)
Companies capable of reimagining legal structures and commercial contracts as products in their own right. (Antora.)
Companies that treat every customer interaction, deployment, operational challenge, and project outcome as an opportunity to build proprietary intelligence.
Companies that never lose sight of their core business but recognize that the first successful product is the beginning of a platform, not the end of one. The strongest businesses will increasingly resemble hub-and-spoke systems, where infrastructure becomes the foundation for higher-order services.
Companies capable of articulating how today's deployment becomes tomorrow's platform. Infrastructure has always suffered from a communication problem. When it works, nothing happens. The lights stay on. Factories continue operating. Grids remain stable. The absence of failure rarely captures attention. Yet these systems are among the most economically valuable assets we build. The companies that can translate reliability, resilience, and coordination into narratives that resonate with investors and customers will possess an advantage that extends well beyond marketing.
The next decade won't simply be defined by who builds the most assets.
It will be defined by who best understands how those assets communicate, coordinate, learn, and create value together.
The future of energy isn't just physical.
It's intelligent.