Skip Technology, Inc.
Develops sustainable energy storage solutions for remote and intermittent power environments.
Website: https://skiptek.com
Cover Block
PUBLIC
| 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
PUBLIC
- Website: https://skiptech.com/about-us-2/
- Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/skip-technology
- LinkedIn (CEO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgantner/
Executive Summary
PUBLIC
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, a meaningfully concentrated cap table for a hardware company at this stage [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. The opportunity is real; the execution risk in long-duration storage hardware is equally real.
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
PUBLIC
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, as Gantner has framed it in press, 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 or other fossil fuels" [CB Insights]. That problem statement has shaped both the chemistry choice (a flow battery optimized for long-duration discharge rather than short-burst frequency response) and the go-to-market posture (community-scale and industrial sites rather than utility-scale grid services) [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, with reporting indicating intent to support local manufacturing in the South Sound region of Washington [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 across the regional cleantech ecosystem [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]. Public disclosures do not include headcount, revenue, or a detailed product roadmap, and the company has not, as of the cited reporting, announced commercial-scale deployments.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Portland Business Journal, KNKX Public Radio, BusinessWire, and the company website.
Product and Technology
MIXED
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 (stack size) from energy (tank size) [PUBLIC] [Portland Business Journal, May 2024]. The company describes the system as targeting discharge durations of roughly 4 to 100-plus hours, a range that places it firmly in the "long-duration energy storage" (LDES) category rather than the lithium-ion-dominated 2-to-4-hour band that serves most current grid applications [PUBLIC] [Portland Business Journal, May 2024]. Skip positions the design explicitly as "a novel, large-scale energy storage system as an alternative to lithium batteries" [PUBLIC] [Continuous Solutions, Nov 2024]. The specific electrolyte chemistry has not been disclosed in the cited public sources, and the company has not published peer-reviewed performance data; investors evaluating the technology should request bench and pilot data directly.
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 [PUBLIC] [BusinessWire, Nov 2024]. That orientation is technically convenient for a flow battery because long-duration, low-cycle-stress applications play to flow chemistry's strengths (long calendar life, deep discharge tolerance, non-flammable electrolytes in most variants) and away from lithium-ion's strengths (high energy density, low capex per kWh at short durations). 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 [PUBLIC] [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 [PUBLIC] [Skip Tech]. Flow battery design is, at its core, a coupled electrochemistry and fluid dynamics problem, so the academic background is directly relevant rather than ornamental. What is not yet visible in public disclosures is the manufacturing and commercial leadership layer that a hardware company typically needs to scale beyond pilots, and no open roles were surfaced from the careers page or major ATS hosts at the time of this review [PRIVATE].
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Portland Business Journal, BusinessWire, Continuous Solutions, and the Skip Tech team page.
Market Research and Opportunity
PUBLIC
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, citing industry sources, 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]. That figure is best read as a current-year revenue snapshot for a specific slice rather than a full TAM, but the directional growth rate is consistent with what BloombergNEF, Wood Mackenzie, and the U.S. Department of Energy have separately published about LDES demand through the end of the decade (analogous market commentary, not directly cited in Skip's own materials).
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Annual growth rate, renewable energy storage | ~30% | [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024] |
| Estimated annual segment revenue | ~$750M | [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024] |
| Skip's targeted discharge duration | 4 to 100+ hours | [Portland Business Journal, May 2024] |
The takeaway from these numbers is straightforward: 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. A 30% CAGR compounds quickly, and the duration band Skip targets is precisely the band that 4-hour lithium structurally cannot serve.
The demand drivers cluster into three buckets. First, decarbonization mandates at the state level (Oregon, Washington, California) and federal incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act make multi-hour storage economically attractive for the first time in many jurisdictions. Second, diesel displacement at remote, tribal, and agricultural sites is a politically and economically resonant use case where the alternative cost (diesel logistics) is genuinely high, and Skip's Puyallup partnership puts the company directly inside that demand pocket [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024]. Third, data center and industrial buyers facing interconnection queues that stretch years are increasingly willing to pay for behind-the-meter storage that lets them deploy renewables faster, a trend that benefits long-duration solutions disproportionately.
Adjacent and substitute markets matter for honest analysis. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) continues to fall in cost and is the default substitute at shorter durations. Other flow chemistries (vanadium, iron-based) have been in commercial deployment for a decade, with ESS Inc. as the highest-profile public example. Thermal storage, compressed air, and gravity systems compete for the multi-day duration band. Regulatory tailwinds are real but uneven: ITC eligibility for standalone storage under the IRA materially improves project economics, while interconnection delays and permitting friction remain the binding constraint on actual deployment timelines.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- KNKX provides one cited sizing data point; broader category context is analogous rather than directly sourced for Skip.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED
Skip enters a flow battery field that is small in number of credible players but increasingly well-capitalized, and its closest public-market reference point sits a few miles away in the same city.
| Company | Positioning | Stage / Funding | Notable Differentiator | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | [Portland Business Journal, May 2024] [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024] |
| ESS Inc. | Iron-flow battery for utility and commercial-scale long-duration storage | Public (NYSE: GWH), prior venture funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures and SoftBank | Iron-electrolyte chemistry, operational deployments, manufacturing facility in Wilsonville, Oregon | [Portland Business Journal, May 2024] |
The segment-by-segment competitive map looks roughly like this. At the utility-scale, multi-hundred-megawatt-hour end of the market, Skip is not currently a player; that band is contested by ESS Inc., Form Energy (iron-air), Invinity (vanadium flow), and increasingly large LFP integrators. At the community-scale, behind-the-meter, and remote-microgrid end (single-digit to low-double-digit MWh), the field is more fragmented, and Skip's positioning around tribal, agricultural, and off-grid customers is genuinely differentiated rather than a crowded fight. Adjacent substitutes (diesel-plus-solar hybrids, LFP-only systems, thermal storage) are the realistic alternatives a customer would evaluate against Skip in the near term.
Where Skip has a defensible early edge: the Puyallup Tribal Enterprises relationship is more than a check. A board seat held by a tribal economic development entity, combined with reported intent to support South Sound manufacturing, gives Skip a structural advantage in selling into the more than 570 federally recognized tribal nations in the U.S., many of which control land where diesel-dependent generation is the status quo and where federal energy sovereignty grants are flowing. That distribution channel is hard for a generalist competitor to replicate quickly. The technical talent concentration is also a real edge at the bench-science stage, though it is perishable: by the time a hardware company needs to ship its hundredth unit, manufacturing and field service competence matter more than founding-team physics credentials.
Where Skip is most exposed: ESS Inc., headquartered in the same metro area, has years of head start, an operating manufacturing line in Wilsonville, public-market capital access (and the public-market scrutiny that comes with it), and named utility customers. If a Pacific Northwest utility or large industrial buyer wants a flow battery today, ESS is the default reference. Skip cannot match that on deployed-megawatt-hours and will not be able to for several years. The company is also exposed on capital intensity: hardware scaling typically requires Series A and B rounds an order of magnitude larger than $5 million, and the cap table is currently concentrated rather than syndicated.
The most plausible 18-month competitive scenario: Skip wins if it converts the Puyallup relationship into a fully funded, fully permitted demonstration project on tribal land that produces independently verified performance data; that single proof point would unlock both follow-on tribal customers and a credible Series A. Skip loses ground if ESS Inc. or a well-funded competitor announces a small-format, off-grid product line aimed at the same rural and tribal segment before Skip has a deployment to point to, because the category-defining customer reference is still up for grabs.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Portland Business Journal and KNKX Public Radio for Skip; ESS Inc. context confirmed by Portland Business Journal.
Opportunity
PUBLIC
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 cited evidence makes that outcome reachable rather than aspirational for three reasons. First, the duration band Skip targets (4 to 100+ hours) is one that lithium-ion structurally cannot serve economically, so the competitive question is which non-lithium chemistry wins, not whether non-lithium storage exists [Portland Business Journal, May 2024]. Second, the customer wedge is real and politically supported: diesel displacement at remote sites is both an economic and a sovereignty issue for tribal nations, and the Puyallup investment plus board seat is direct evidence that at least one major tribal enterprise sees Skip as a strategic partner rather than a portfolio bet [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024]. Third, the regional ecosystem partnership with Continuous Solutions and PEC-PNW gives Skip access to systems integration and demonstration infrastructure it would otherwise need to build from scratch [BusinessWire, Nov 2024].
Growth scenarios.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tribal energy infrastructure standard | Skip becomes the default LDES vendor for federally recognized tribal nations pursuing energy sovereignty projects | A flagship Puyallup deployment produces independently verified performance data and unlocks DOE Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program financing | Puyallup is already lead investor and board member, with reported South Sound manufacturing intent [KNKX Public Radio, Apr 2024] [South Sound Biz] |
| Pacific Northwest manufacturing anchor | Skip becomes the storage-hardware anchor of a regional cleantech cluster, supplying agricultural and industrial customers across OR, WA, ID | The Continuous Solutions and PEC-PNW partnership matures into a coordinated demonstration and commercialization pipeline | Partnership announced November 2024 with explicit regional cluster framing [BusinessWire, Nov 2024] [Continuous Solutions, Nov 2024] |
| Diesel displacement platform | Skip's flow battery becomes the reference solution for replacing diesel generators at remote industrial sites (mining, telecom, agriculture) | A first commercial-scale deployment with verified diesel-displacement economics published in a third-party study | The problem framing ("intermittent, expensive, and dependent on diesel") is consistent across all of Skip's public communications [CB Insights] [BusinessWire, Nov 2024] |
What compounding looks like. Hardware businesses do not have software's marginal-cost flywheels, but they do have a different kind of compounding: each deployed unit generates field performance data, each field deployment de-risks the next sale, and each manufacturing batch lowers per-unit cost along a learning curve. For Skip specifically, the flywheel that matters most is the tribal-customer reference loop. A successful Puyallup deployment is not just one sale; it is a credential that travels across the inter-tribal economic development network and into DOE program offices. Layered on top is a regional manufacturing flywheel: South Sound assembly capacity, if built, both lowers logistics cost for Pacific Northwest customers and creates local jobs that strengthen the political case for the next project. Neither flywheel is yet spinning at meaningful velocity, but both are structurally set up by the partnerships announced in 2024.
The size of the win. ESS Inc., the most direct public comparable, went public via SPAC in 2021 at a valuation that briefly exceeded $1 billion before settling substantially lower as deployment timelines slipped. Form Energy, a privately held LDES competitor with a different chemistry, 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, with the caveat that public-market sentiment for hardware climate companies has been volatile (scenario, not a forecast). For Skip, the more interesting framing is not the exit multiple but the strategic value: a company that owns the tribal-and-remote LDES segment in North America is a logical acquisition target for a utility, an industrial conglomerate, or a major battery integrator looking to enter the long-duration band without building the chemistry from scratch.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Skip-specific facts are GREEN-cited; comparable valuations and scenario sizing are analogous and explicitly labeled as such.
Sources
PUBLIC
[Crunchbase] Skip Technology - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/skip-technology
[Skip Tech] Team - Skip Tech | http://www.skiptek.com/team/
[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
[LinkedIn] Brennan Gantner - Co-Founder at Skip Technology | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgantner/
[CB Insights] Skip Technology - Products, Competitors, Financials, Employees, Headquarters Locations | https://www.cbinsights.com/company/skip-technology
[Continuous Solutions, Nov 2024] Press Release: Skip Technology, Inc. Partners With Continuous Solutions | https://www.continuousolutions.com/blog-cs/2024/11
[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
[Skip Tech] About Us - Skip Tech | https://skiptech.com/about-us-2/
[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/
[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
[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
[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/
[The Org] Brennan Gantner - CEO & Co-Founder at Skip Technology | https://theorg.com/org/skip-technology/org-chart/brennan-gantner
[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
[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.html
Articles about Skip Technology, Inc.
- Skip Technology Wants a Flow Battery in Every Diesel-Dependent Village — The Portland startup, backed by the Puyallup Tribe, is betting astrophysicists can out-engineer lithium for 100-hour storage.