Skip Technology, Inc.

Cover Block

Field	Value
Name	Skip Technology, Inc.
Tagline	Develops sustainable energy storage solutions for remote and intermittent power environments.
Headquarters	Portland, OR
Founded	2018
Stage	Seed
Business Model	B2B
Industry	Cleantech / Climatetech
Technology Type	Hardware
Geography	North America
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (2)
Funding Label	Undisclosed
Total Disclosed	~$5,000,000

Links

• Website: https://skiptech.com/about-us-2/
• Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/skip-technology
• LinkedIn (CEO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgantner/

Summary and Signal

Skip Technology is a Portland-based hardware startup building a long-duration flow battery aimed at the unglamorous but increasingly urgent problem of storing renewable energy for hours, or even days, at sites that today depend on diesel generators [Portland Business Journal, May 2024]. The company was co-founded in 2018 by two astrophysics PhDs, CEO Brennan Gantner and President Benjamin Brown, who are translating fluid dynamics expertise into a stationary battery designed for 4 to 100-plus hour discharge windows [Portland Business Journal, May 2024] [Skip Tech]. In April 2024, Puyallup Tribal Enterprises took a lead investment position and a board seat, and a follow-on tranche reported later in 2024 brought disclosed funding to roughly $5 million [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024] [Center of Excellence for Clean Energy]. Skip's commercial wedge is rural, agricultural, and tribal communities where grid extension is uneconomic and diesel is both costly and politically unpopular, a positioning reinforced by a November 2024 partnership with Continuous Solutions and PEC-PNW to anchor a Pacific Northwest manufacturing and demonstration cluster [BusinessWire, Nov 2024]. The company's nearest publicly named comparable, fellow Portland flow-battery developer ESS Inc., illustrates both the pull of the category and the difficulty of scaling iron-electrolyte hardware profitably. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the questions worth tracking are pilot deployment data, electrolyte chemistry disclosures, and whether the Puyallup partnership translates into a first commercial-scale order on tribal land.

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Portland Business Journal, BusinessWire, KNKX Public Radio, and the company's own About page.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Value
Stage	Seed
Business Model	B2B
Industry / Vertical	Cleantech / Climatetech, energy storage
Technology Type	Hardware (flow battery)
Geography	North America (Pacific Northwest focus)
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (2), both PhDs
Funding	~$5,000,000 disclosed, lead investor Puyallup Tribal Enterprises

Company Overview

Skip Technology, Inc. was founded in 2018 in Portland, Oregon, by Brennan Gantner and Benjamin Brown, two University of Colorado Boulder-trained astrophysicists who pivoted from academic fluid dynamics into stationary energy storage [Skip Tech]. The thesis is that the parts of the world most exposed to power unreliability are not dense urban grids but rather remote, agricultural, and off-grid environments where electricity is intermittent, expensive, and dependent on diesel [CB Insights]. That problem statement has shaped both the chemistry choice (a flow battery optimized for long-duration discharge) and the go-to-market posture (community-scale and industrial sites) [Portland Business Journal, May 2024].

The company operated quietly for several years before surfacing publicly in 2024 with two related milestones. In April, Puyallup Tribal Enterprises, the economic development arm of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, became a lead investor and took a seat on Skip's board [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024] [South Sound Biz]. A subsequent funding event reported through Tribal Business News and the Center of Excellence for Clean Energy brought total disclosed capital to approximately $5 million [Center of Excellence for Clean Energy] [Tribal Business News]. In November 2024, Skip announced a partnership with Continuous Solutions and the Pacific Energy Cluster of the Pacific Northwest (PEC-PNW) to coordinate research, demonstration, and commercialization activity [BusinessWire, Nov 2024] [Continuous Solutions, Nov 2024].

The company remains privately held, headquartered in Portland, with research operations led by Brown and corporate leadership by Gantner [Skip Tech].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Portland Business Journal, KNKX Public Radio, BusinessWire, and the company website.

The Product and the Stack

Skip's product is a flow battery: a stationary energy storage system in which the energy-carrying electrolyte is stored in external tanks and pumped through a reaction stack, decoupling power from energy [Portland Business Journal, May 2024]. The company describes the system as targeting discharge durations of roughly 4 to 100-plus hours, placing it in the long-duration energy storage (LDES) category [Portland Business Journal, May 2024]. Skip positions the design as a novel, large-scale energy storage system as an alternative to lithium batteries [Continuous Solutions, Nov 2024]. The specific electrolyte chemistry has not been disclosed in the cited public sources.

The target deployment profile is consistent across the company's public statements: remote and agricultural sites, community microgrids, and industrial loads currently served by diesel gensets [BusinessWire, Nov 2024]. The November 2024 Continuous Solutions partnership is positioned as a route to integrate Skip's storage hardware with power electronics and systems engineering for those off-grid and edge-of-grid use cases [BusinessWire, Nov 2024].

On the team side, the technical leadership concentration is unusually heavy for a seed-stage company: Brown holds a PhD in astrophysics with a fluid dynamics specialization, and Gantner holds a PhD in astrophysics from CU Boulder [Skip Tech].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Portland Business Journal, BusinessWire, Continuous Solutions, and the Skip Tech team page.

Market Research and Opportunity

Long-duration energy storage is moving from a research curiosity to a procurement category because the grid is being asked to absorb variable renewables at a scale that 4-hour lithium cannot economically serve. KNKX Public Radio reported that the renewable energy storage market is growing at roughly 30% annually, with estimated yearly revenue around $750 million in the segment relevant to Skip [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024].

Metric	Value
Annual growth rate, renewable energy storage	~30%
Estimated annual segment revenue	~$750M
Skip's targeted discharge duration	4 to 100+ hours

Skip is aiming at a category whose absolute size today is modest relative to lithium-ion stationary storage, but whose growth rate and policy tailwinds are among the strongest in the broader energy transition. The demand drivers cluster into three buckets: decarbonization mandates, diesel displacement at remote and tribal sites, and data center/industrial buyers facing interconnection queues.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- KNKX provides one cited sizing data point; broader category context is analogous.

The Competitive Field

Skip enters a flow battery field that is small in number of credible players but increasingly well-capitalized.

Company	Positioning	Stage / Funding	Notable Differentiator
Skip Technology	Long-duration flow battery, 4-100+ hours, remote and agricultural focus	Seed, ~$5M disclosed	Astrophysics-trained founding team; Puyallup Tribal Enterprises lead investor and board seat
ESS Inc.	Iron-flow battery for utility and commercial-scale long-duration storage	Public (NYSE: GWH), prior venture funding	Iron-electrolyte chemistry, operational deployments, manufacturing facility in Wilsonville, Oregon

At the community-scale, behind-the-meter, and remote-microgrid end, the field is more fragmented, and Skip's positioning around tribal, agricultural, and off-grid customers is differentiated. The Puyallup Tribal Enterprises relationship is a structural advantage in selling into the more than 570 federally recognized tribal nations in the U.S. ESS Inc., headquartered in the same metro area, has years of head start, an operating manufacturing line, and named utility customers.

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Portland Business Journal and KNKX Public Radio for Skip; ESS Inc. context confirmed by Portland Business Journal.

Opportunity

If Skip's chemistry works at field scale and the tribal-and-rural distribution wedge holds, the company has a credible path to becoming the default long-duration storage provider for the segment of North American electricity demand that the utility-scale flow battery market is structurally ignoring.

The headline opportunity

The single largest outcome Skip could plausibly become is the category-defining long-duration storage vendor for community-scale and off-grid sites in North America, with tribal nations as the anchor customer base. The duration band Skip targets (4 to 100+ hours) is one that lithium-ion structurally cannot serve economically [Portland Business Journal, May 2024]. The Puyallup investment plus board seat is direct evidence that at least one major tribal enterprise sees Skip as a strategic partner [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024]. The regional ecosystem partnership with Continuous Solutions and PEC-PNW gives Skip access to systems integration and demonstration infrastructure [BusinessWire, Nov 2024].

Growth scenarios

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst
Tribal energy infrastructure standard	Skip becomes the default LDES vendor for federally recognized tribal nations	A flagship Puyallup deployment produces independently verified performance data
Pacific Northwest manufacturing anchor	Skip becomes the storage-hardware anchor of a regional cleantech cluster	The Continuous Solutions and PEC-PNW partnership matures into a coordinated demonstration pipeline
Diesel displacement platform	Skip's flow battery becomes the reference solution for replacing diesel generators	A first commercial-scale deployment with verified diesel-displacement economics

The size of the win

ESS Inc. went public via SPAC in 2021 at a valuation that briefly exceeded $1 billion. Form Energy, a privately held LDES competitor, was reported in 2024 to have raised at a valuation north of $1 billion. Those reference points suggest the addressable equity-value outcome for a successful long-duration storage company sits in the high-hundreds-of-millions to low-billions range at maturity.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Skip-specific facts are GREEN-cited; comparable valuations and scenario sizing are analogous.

Sources

1. [Crunchbase] Skip Technology - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/skip-technology
2. [Skip Tech] Team - Skip Tech | http://www.skiptek.com/team/
3. [BusinessWire, Nov 2024] Skip Technology, Inc. Partners With Continuous Solutions to Deliver Reliable Clean Electricity to Remote and Agricultural Communities | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241112697543/en/Skip-Technology-Inc.-Partners-With-Continuous-Solutions-to-Deliver-Reliable-Clean-Electricity-to-Remote-and-Agricultural-Communities
4. [LinkedIn] Brennan Gantner - Co-Founder at Skip Technology | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgantner/
5. [CB Insights] Skip Technology - Products, Competitors, Financials, Employees, Headquarters Locations | https://www.cbinsights.com/company/skip-technology
6. [Continuous Solutions, Nov 2024] Press Release: Skip Technology, Inc. Partners With Continuous Solutions | https://www.continuousolutions.com/blog-cs/2024/11
7. [Tribal Business News] Puyallup Tribe invests in clean energy future with Skip Technology partnership | https://tribalbusinessnews.com/sections/energy/14691-puyallup-tribe-invests-in-clean-energy-future-with-skip-technology-partnership
8. [Skip Tech] About Us - Skip Tech | https://skiptech.com/about-us-2/
9. [Puyallup Tribe] Puyallup Tribal Enterprises becomes lead investor in Skip Technology | https://www.puyalluptribe-nsn.gov/news/puyallup-tribal-enterprises-becomes-lead-investor-in-skip-technology-a-cutting-edge-energy-storage-company-that-aims-to-rework-power-grid/
10. [South Sound Biz] Puyallup Tribe Invests in Battery Technology to Store Renewable Energy; Plans Local Manufacturing | https://www.southsoundbiz.com/news/puyallup-tribe-skip-technology-battery/article_9c95dd08-025e-11ef-84da-67239ccf767e.html
11. [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024] Puyallup Tribe partners with renewable energy storage startup | https://www.knkx.org/environment/2024-04-24/puyallup-tribe-partners-with-renewable-energy-storage-startup
12. [Center of Excellence for Clean Energy] Local Battery Startup Skip Technology Raises $5 Million in Additional Funding | https://www.cleanenergyexcellence.org/local-battery-startup-skip-technology-raises-5-million-in-additional-funding/
13. [The Org] Brennan Gantner - CEO & Co-Founder at Skip Technology | https://theorg.com/org/skip-technology/org-chart/brennan-gantner
14. [Portland Business Journal, May 2024] As energy storage surges, second Portland flow battery startup emerges | https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/inno/stories/news/2024/05/09/skip-technology-flow-batter-startup.html
15. [Finsmes, Apr 2024] Skip Technology Receives Investment from Puyallup Tribal Enterprises | https://www.finsmes.com/2024/04/skip-technology-receives-investment-from-puyallup-tribal-enterprises.com