Former SpaceX engineer raises $26M for Critical Loop, which cuts multi-year grid wait times to months

your desk or in your house or you might frame it. Uh you might not really send us some

Yeah, we have a Metallica vinyl. We still got to get a record player. Anyway, without further ado, we have our first guest in the waiting room. Balormo Murphy from Critical Loop, the CEO working to accelerate grid access using autonomous control, storage, and flexible generation for industrial and mission critical power needs. How are you?

I'm doing fantastic. Great to talk to you guys.

Thanks so much for taking the time to hop on. Uh since this is your first time on the show, would you mind kicking it off with an introduction on yourself and the company?

Yeah. uh of myself I I'm an engineer by training and I founded this company uh a few years ago and uh I worked at SpaceX for 12 years uh before that

success

so much sorry I'll stop and let you talk

we're just have we're having fun

SpaceX for 12 years what what decade was that exactly is that uh

that was like from uh prior to sending the first uh Dragon capsule to the space station through flying human space flight. I kind of left efforts to make Falcon 9 suitable to fly humans and then decided to turn my attention to the electricity grid because I think it's that important, you know.

Yeah. Wait. Yeah. Unpack you said the grid. What what what was the term that you used?

Yeah. Just the electricity grid is uh pretty important. Uh you would take manufacturing. I mean everybody talks about data centers, right? But let's take just the you know the power that you and I use the power that's required to manufacture uh all that stuff uh needs a reliable source of cost effective power and right now kind of the condition that people have is like you know companies are going to the utility and waiting for multiple years to get the power they need and so we decided to start this company with this vision of how can you get the power that you need quicker right like how can you better utilize you know the crazy thing is since you guys seem to like stats. Uh the grid is pretty underutilized as you as you look at it, right? It's like less than 50% utilized.

Sorry, give us the stat. You have to wait for the stat and then you play some board.

I got I got over You said it was underutilized. I got I got kind of excited.

Yeah. I mean, it's always exciting to find something underutilized and figure out how to make it more, you know, better utilized. And the way to do that is to throw energy storage at the edge. Sure.

Close close to where you know the industrial customer is consuming sometimes some generation as well, right? So basically we can take this like multi-year wait time uh and instead make that you know months and maybe even days, right? So that that's kind of what crypto loop's about.

Okay. So

okay. Yeah, maybe let let's uh I I get the general idea, but is it you're saying putting storage at the edge so that you can take power during off- peak times and store it to kind of like smooth out demand? Is that is that generally the approach?

Yeah, exactly. So, when you look at the history of grid infrastructure, right, it's always built uh historically to the worst possible condition like the hottest day of the year when everybody's going full blast on AC's also running their peak AI training loads. etc., right? Like it's designed for the peak. And so the paradigm that we're trying to work towards is like, you know, what if you could, you know, uh what if instead of overbuilding the grid to support that peak, what if you could take some of the storage and some generation at the edge and offset like basically the upgrades you would have otherwise made for millions and millions of dollars, right? For a fewer million dollars. So yeah. So, so, so basically, yeah, exactly as Jordy said, like you know, you're using, you know, you're switching to more local sources of power. You're either storing or generating power more locally and and to do that requires, you know, pretty sophisticated orchestration to do that seamlessly. And that's what Prickloop's about. So, uh, do do you see this as like the do you want to jump straight to like the gawatt mega projects or is there actually more opportunity with uh like smaller scale? Like I I remember seeing like wasn't Colossus 2 uh originally like a washing machine factory or something like that. Like there's a lot of industrial like buildings that make things and they draw a lot of power and they probably only operate 9 to5 or maybe they have a night shift. But for something like that they could put a battery installation be absorbing power from the grid when usage is low and then deploying that during peak hours without straining the grid. Is that the general thesis?

Yeah, that's the general concept that there's a massive middle here, right? As you point out, right? And you know, a lot of our referrals come from uh of customers come from commercial real estate, right? Where people are signing up to a facility, then they're going to throw some machines there to do some cool stuff, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh wow, uh we have to wait 5 years for the power. That's that's a that's a problem. And and so uh by then deploying this energy storage at the edge and this orchestration layer that curriculoop has created, you have this ability to like identify like when there's capacity on the grid, use power from the grid. when there's not capacity, store that in batteries, uh use generation, you know, you know, traverse that gap and and so like, you know, our customers range from, you know, everything from like ports, airports, uh critical infrastructure, logistics hubs, um it's the whole range. And I mean, that's not to say we won't one day take on some of these gigawatt things because it's the same operating system, if you will, right?

Yeah, totally. uh t talk about the technologies that are actually uh like augmenting uh power generation on site uh because I you know you always hear the story about like the hospital has a 1 megawatt diesel generator or on site or something in case there's a blackout and it feels like we're moving more towards battery banks but what are you actually seeing in terms of uh various technologies that are going through uh scale up on the manufacturing side becoming more economical we've talked to a lot of nuclear founders who are sort of saying in in 2030 you'll be able to have a 1 megawatt nuclear reactor that seems farther out but what what are you where is demand right now

yeah so uh I think your most efficient source of generation is always going to be sort of the centralized one and the challenge has to do with like how you distribute it

and so that's why battery capacity is like you know the cost of batteries generally coming down uh and the power conversion technology advancing more. You have this ability to store and dispatch battery power like AC or DC eventually, right? To serve whatever machines that are at the site. And um so that also allows you to save money on the generation like uh you know imagine like doing a bunch of fuel drops. If you can you can avoid that uh you might use the battery. So I mean we also I mean the cool thing about our systems is that you know we run sites where there's like propane generation and batteries that allows you to under I mean generators are in super high demand right and because whatnot this allow what our technology allows is like you can use like more commonly available generators and use the batteries to do the peak power. So, uh, I mean, reactors, I mean, I'm a huge fan of SMRs, too. And like one day we're going to, you know, make all these things work together and like, you know, who owns the management of the grid at the edge. That's kind of what we're excited about.

Yeah. Uh, Matthew in the chat is talking about how you're placing the cells on on semi-truckss as well, so they're they're they're mobile. Is that is that

Yeah, that that that's a Yeah. So, when you look at this general problem, right, it's dynamic in nature, right? like a big logistics facility moves in all of a sudden they're like we're going to add robotics to this site, right? Uh to and then but that problem might change as time progresses where the utility pulls out a transformer eventually, right? And so you can think of like the maximum return on investment way to run this business is like you you're able to physically relocate these assets uh batteries or generation to new sites over the life uh of of these assets. And that's kind of this modular and relocatable approach is kind of fundamental to how we think about it.

What did you do to earn the NASA exceptional public service medal?

That's a this is the first time someone's asked me this question. Uh but uh yeah, I I certified Falcon 9 for human space flight. So I made it suitable to fly astronauts and I was the chief engineer for the first flight of Bob and Doug, the astronauts we launched space.

That's amazing. I love it. Thank you.

What was your what was your reaction to the to the Artemis 2 mission?

Oh, yeah. I I was excited, man. Like I mean, uh, funnily enough, I worked on that project, too, in 2007 at my first job after college. Yeah. So, I worked on the Orion capsule. So, it's a long time coming. It's a long time coming. And, uh, I was excited to see it. And I'm really hopeful that lots more cool things will fly in space in the next year or two.

Why did you uh

Why did you Why did you put Nutella? Why'd you put so much Nutella on board?

Why why uh why not continue on on your your space journey?

You kind of seem like you you you uh be on the potentially path to going to space.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I I enjoy a good challenge. So, uh to me, the next most complex machine or or you know, maybe even more complicated machine than a rocket was the electricity grid. And then how do you fix this thing? uh which is like you know there's so many regulatory aspects and like you know industrial and utility uh clashing and like how do you make this machine work and to me that's fundamental that that's not to say that I won't be interested in space again uh I call it my hobby now

yeah uh tell us about the round I want to hit the gong

how much you raise

uh so we closed a $26 million round

from who

uh yeah so conifer infrastructure partners in handover led the round. Uh they're really seasoned operators in uh in the realm of energy and we're super excited to partner with them.

That's amazing. Well, congratulations.

Great to meet you.

Great to meet you.

Thank you so much.

Interesting uh career and excited to follow the company

and very important work.

Cheers, guys.

Goodbye. Up next, we have the chief architect