Blackstone and Halliburton agreed to invest $1 billion in VoltaGrid, a six-year-old Houston company that provides power generation, portable power, CNG fuel supply, infrastructure, and energy management services.
VoltaGrid also announced on May 11 an agreement to acquire Propell Energy Technology, a manufacturer of oilfield and well-servicing equipment based in Granbury that makes a proprietary high-inertia QPac system developed specifically for AI data centers in an existing partnership with VoltaGrid. Terms weren’t disclosed. Both transactions are expected to close in the middle of this year.
Kirkland & Ellis and Sidley Austin are outside legal counsel to VoltaGrid.
The Kirkland team is led by Dallas Partners Kevin Crews and Alex Robertson. The Kirkland team also includes Daley King, Nick Lewis, Joe Tobias, Karsten Busby and Jon Kidwell in Dallas with Chandler Jones, Julian Seiguer, Lucas Spivey, Osaro Aifuwa and Chad Smith in Houston.
David Wheat works from Dallas and Houston, while Stephen Jacobson works from Houston and New York. John Decker in is Washington, D.C., and Mike Thorpe is in Chicago.
The Sidley team that worked on the investment included Houston Partners George Vlahakos, Chanse Barnes and Angela Richards.
The Sidley team that worked on the acquisition included Houston Partners Atman Shukl and George Vlahakos once again, as well as Miami Senior Associate Karla Utset.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett is serving as legal advisor to Blackstone with Matias Botto the lone Texas attorney on the team. Mogan Daniels Slager, a small M&A law firm based in Vancouver, is the outside legal counsel to Propell.
VoltaGrid Founder and CEO Nathan Ough said the acquisition “adds proven engineering and integration capabilities that will further extend our technology and operational leadership as we continue to scale.”
VoltaGrid will expand Propell’s existing facilities in Granbury, building two automated manufacturing plants that are expected to grow capacity by about 300 MW a month through a combination of reciprocating engines and turbines.
“VoltaGrid is a highly differentiated platform addressing one of the most important infrastructure needs of the AI era: reliable, rapidly deployable power,” according to Blackstone Managing Director William Nicholson.
VoltaGrid plans to use proceeds from the investment – $775 million from a primary capital raise with $225 million from existing investors – to accelerate its behind-the-meter power generation for data centers, microgrids and industrial applications to “meet unprecedented customer demand.”
Goldman Sachs is financial advisor to VoltaGrid; Deloitte Corporate Finance acted as financial advisor to Propell Energy Technology. Morgan Stanley acted as lead financial advisor to Blackstone, and Lazard also advised the world’s largest asset manager with more than $1.3 trillion in total assets.