AUSTIN: TAR, a company building off-grid power systems for artificial intelligence data centers, said Thursday it has raised $120 million in Series A funding led by Spark Capital at a $1 billion post-money valuation.

The company said the funding will support expansion of its Austin headquarters and San Francisco engineering office, growth of its West Texas logistics and manufacturing operation, and acceleration of deployments already underway.

Power has become an increasingly visible constraint on AI expansion. Interconnection queues stretch years long, and data center projects frequently stall because of limited grid capacity and local opposition. TAR sidesteps those obstacles by building self-contained, modular systems that combine renewable energy generation and batteries in West Texas. The company says its projects do not compete with communities for power.

TAR takes a vertically integrated approach to energy deployment, handling everything from site selection and engineering to procurement, logistics, civil works, construction, commissioning and ongoing operations. The company says that control over the full chain lets it move faster than projects that depend on coordination among multiple slow-moving third parties.

Using a purpose-built deployment automation stack, TAR says it can install generation capacity faster, at larger scale and with far less field labor than conventional construction. Its team combines energy veterans from Hut 8, AES and Vistra with robotics engineers from Zipline, GrayMatter Robotics and Lucid Motors.

“To lead the frontier of AI after a lack of investment in the electrical grid for decades requires a complete rethinking of energy deployments,” said Pat Becker, co-founder of TAR. “Gigawatt-scale deployments in tight time windows necessitate owning the full stack end-to-end.”

Co-founder Lenny Soenke said customer demand has been strong.

“We are excited by the demand from our customers,” Soenke said. “Our focus now is scaling supply to make a real impact on the power shortage stopping the scaling of compute.”

TAR said it is currently executing a utility-scale deployment with one of the largest neoclouds, developing a dedicated project campus and completing TAR Terminal One, its manufacturing and logistics center in West Texas.

“Power is becoming the main bottleneck to scaling compute. We will need innovation, unprecedented speed and exceptional companies unblocking it at every level,” said Will Reed, general partner at Spark Capital.

TAR said it is hiring in Austin and San Francisco across engineering, robotics, power systems, operations, supply chain and project management. Its leadership includes Jeff Silvan, head of projects; Christian Sanchez, head of power systems; and Raphael Levy, head of supply chain.

The company was founded by Becker and Leonhard Soenke in 2026. It is backed by Spark Capital, Buckley Ventures, Align Fund and others.