Voltus Acquires Brightfield AI to Accelerate Energy Storage Deployment
Acquisition integrates a battery development platform and a team of distributed storage veterans
SAN FRANCISCO, June 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Voltus, Inc., the leading virtual power plant (VPP) operator and distributed energy resource (DER) platform, today announced its acquisition of Brightfield AI. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Commercial and industrial energy storage is a large, untapped opportunity: while the C&I sector accounts for 60% of total U.S. electricity consumption, it currently hosts less than 1% of installed BESS capacity. Brightfield is an agentic battery project development company whose platform dramatically reduces the time and cost involved in deploying energy storage, allowing its EPC partners to cost-effectively deploy batteries at scale.
“The combination of Voltus and Brightfield changes the math: we can now deploy cost-effective energy storage at many of our customer sites,” said Dana Guernsey, CEO of Voltus. “Brightfield’s execution expertise and proven industry credibility are precisely what we need to scale storage and provide our customers with another answer to their challenge of higher energy costs."
The primary obstacles holding back C&I battery development have been the front-end friction of customer acquisition, highly complex site evaluations, and the cost of the battery itself.
Larsh Johnson, Co-Founder of Brightfield AI, said: “We chose to join forces with Voltus because of the credibility of their leadership, their execution-focused culture, and their position in the DER space. We are actively inviting leading battery manufacturers, financial institutions, and C&I energy users—including hyperscalers looking to unlock Voltus’s Bring Your Own CapacityTM (BYOC) solutions—to collaborate with us on this next phase of deployment. Voltus already partners with leading EPCs who are experts in physical infrastructure construction. Now, we are offering these vital execution partners access to an incredibly powerful customer acquisition engine and platform that handles all aspects of energy storage deployment in a fraction of the typical time and cost.”
Oleksandr Vovk, Co-Founder of Brightfield AI, added: "Voltus has trusted relationships with thousands of C&I facilities. The combined company can leverage Brightfield’s AI battery modeling and optimization algorithms to rapidly assess portfolio site readiness and automate early-stage development workflows. We are thrilled to join Voltus in order to deliver real capacity to a strained grid."
The Brightfield founding team is widely recognized for scaling businesses in the distributed energy space, and will take on new roles at Voltus.
- Tim Hade, CEO of Brightfield AI, will join Voltus as Senior Vice President of its battery division. Hade brings 15 years of energy infrastructure experience, having co-founded Scale Microgrids.
- Larsh Johnson will become Chief Technology Officer of Voltus. Widely regarded as a pioneer of C&I battery storage and smart grid software, Johnson previously served as CTO of Stem, Inc., where he led development of Athena, one of the world's largest AI-enabled battery optimization platforms. Neil Lakin, Co-Founder and CTO of Voltus, will become Voltus’s Chief Architect.
- Oleksandr Vovk, President of Brightfield AI, will serve as Vice President of Battery Energy Storage at Voltus, leading the buildout of the AI-native battery deployment platform.
- Peter Krasco, COO of Brightfield AI, will serve as Vice President of Battery Operations.
About Voltus
Voltus is the leading DER technology platform and virtual power plant operator connecting distributed energy resources to electricity markets, delivering less expensive, more reliable, and more sustainable electricity. Voltus's commercial and industrial customers and DER partners generate cash by allowing Voltus to maximize the value of their flexible load, distributed generation, energy storage, energy efficiency, and electric vehicle resources in these markets. To learn more, visit www.voltus.co.
Media contact
Mona Khaldi
press@voltus.co
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