There are certain companies that capture the imagination of investors and refuse to let go, representing the purest essence of what venture capital is designed to achieve: a phenomenal team of entrepreneurs pursuing a world-changing idea that, if successful, can scale into a category-defining institution. For one prominent venture capitalist, that company was always Form Energy. Long before joining Sequoia, during a period of garden leave and even while on family vacations, the thought of Form Energy remained a constant preoccupation, serving as a shining example of high-stakes, transformative innovation.
The journey began in the spring of 2020, during the initial shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the investor first met Mateo Jaramillo, the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy. It was a memorable encounter, conducted entirely behind face masks as the world adjusted to a new reality. At that time, Jaramillo—who previously founded and ran Tesla’s pioneering energy business—laid out a deceptively simple yet monumental thesis. He recognized that while wind and solar power were inevitably taking over the electrical grid, the energy transition had a glaring blind spot: the lack of viable, long-duration storage.
Lithium-ion batteries had proven to be a remarkable chemistry for electric vehicles and could successfully store grid-scale energy for four to six hours, but they were fundamentally unsuited for multi-day storage. Operating from first principles, Jaramillo had assembled a veritable "Avengers" team of battery pioneers to solve the problem. He brought on board legendary battery scientist Yet-Ming Chiang of MIT as Chief Scientist and Billy Woodford as Chief Technology Officer. Together, the team set their sights on a seemingly impossible challenge: building an iron-air battery from scratch. The logic was rooted in elemental abundance—iron is cheap and ubiquitous, while air is entirely free. The ultimate goal was to turn these inexpensive, abundant materials into a battery system that could compete directly with fossil fuel-fired gas peaker plants on cost, while delivering a clean, reliable, and continuous baseload energy resource.
At the time, lacking deep technical expertise in battery chemistry, the investor sought to independently verify whether the underlying science was sound. A prominent Harvard professor was recruited as a consultant to diligence the technology. At the conclusion of a rigorous review, the professor gave the project an enthusiastic thumbs-up. As a tangible sign of his confidence in the breakthrough science, the academic even asked if he could roll his consulting fees directly into the company’s investment round.
By the time the investor arrived at Sequoia in mid-2023, Mateo Jaramillo was one of the very first people on his call list. At that juncture, the company was just breaking ground on its first high-volume battery manufacturing facility, strategically situated on the site of a shuttered steel mill in West Virginia. By July 2024, a site visit to the facility alongside Sequoia partner Isaiah Boone left the visitors utterly astounded. In an era where countless technology companies talk broadly about the reindustrialization of America, Form Energy was actively making it happen, breathing new life into a rust-belt community and creating more than 400 new jobs along the way. Given that China has long stood as the undisputed epicenter of global battery manufacturing, the prospect of building a United States national battery champion—anchored in a fundamentally new technology, which remains a core strength of American innovation—provided a profound sense of energy and purpose.
The path forward, however, was far from straightforward. Over the following year, the company plunged into what is colloquially known in the hardware and manufacturing sectors as "production hell." It was the exact crucible that legendary industrial pioneers like Tesla and SpaceX had endured before them. The reality of true American reindustrialization is that it happens neither overnight nor without immense friction. Yet, companies that survive this severe gauntlet invariably emerge sturdier, stronger, and more resilient. To the immense credit of Jaramillo and his entire team, they responded by doubling down on their mission. By that time, Jaramillo had relocated his entire family from San Francisco to Western Pennsylvania, a short drive from the manufacturing plant. Having witnessed and survived this exact scaling nightmare during his tenure at Tesla, Jaramillo knew precisely what was required: to live, sleep, and breathe the operation until the crisis was broken.
And break through they did. The unmistakable turning point arrived when the company secured the landmark commercial validation everyone in the energy sector knew was inevitable: a massive, hyperscale project order from a major corporate buyer. Nine years after its founding, Form Energy had accomplished the core mission it set out to achieve, successfully proving that it could manufacture battery systems capable of competing economically with traditional gas infrastructure.
Simultaneously, broader macroeconomic and technological forces aligned in the company’s favor. The explosive rise of artificial intelligence provided an unprecedented catalyst in the energy markets, abruptly transforming the task of rebuilding and securing the electrical grid from a "nice to have" corporate initiative into an absolute "need to have" national imperative. For an enterprise that had spent nearly a decade forging deep, trusted relationships with utility companies and regulatory bodies, the timing could not have been more fortuitous. Form Energy found itself positioned at the very epicenter of emergent AI-driven power demand.
Recognizing the accelerating momentum, investors flew back to West Virginia exactly two years after their initial tour. This time, the objective was specific: to convince Mateo Jaramillo to formally partner with Sequoia. Even though the company’s Series G funding round had already closed, the persistent advocacy of the Sequoia team persuaded the leadership to open the door. Initially, the proposal centered on a $50 million investment. However, when Jaramillo presented directly to the broader Sequoia partnership, the partners were so profoundly struck by his absolute clarity of vision and his deeply substantive, execution-oriented mindset that they aggressively upsized the commitment to $100 million.
As noted in the earliest internal memos written to Sequoia leadership regarding Form Energy, the enterprise shares the profile of generational companies like SpaceX or Nvidia—enterprises where it can take an entire decade just to get off the ground, but where the eventual market opportunity is unimaginably vast. Form Energy is currently addressing a terawatt-scale market, and the opportunity to scale up from a handful of initial validation projects toward the total transformation of the United States electrical grid is immense. Furthermore, this massive infrastructure evolution is no longer optional; it has become an indispensable prerequisite if the country—and the booming artificial intelligence sector—is to achieve its long-term potential.
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