Arbor Energy just landed a billion-dollar order to bring rocket turbine tech to the power grid

Summary

Energy startup Arbor Energy on Wednesday said it had sold up to 5 gigawatts worth of its modular turbines to GridMarket, a company that helps arrange power projects for data centers and industrial users. “Everyone wants more power. They wanted it yesterday,” Brad Hartwig, co-founder and CEO of Arbor, told TechCrunch. “The time frames are compressing and the scale is getting larger.” Arbor’s Halcyon turbines are based on rocket turbomachinery, high-performance engine technology originally developed for spaceflight, and its first commercial turbines will be 3D printed and capable of generating 25 megawatts each. GridMarket’s order, if fully fulfilled, represents 200 units. Neither company disclosed the exact price of the deal, though Hartwig said that Arbor has seen a “willingness to pay of upwards of $100 per megawatt-hour.” A person familiar with the deal told TechCrunch that the total is in the single-digit billions of dollars. The startup plans to connect its first turbine to the grid in 2028 and ramp production through 2030, at which point it hopes to deliver more than 100 turbines annually. The goal, Hartwig said, is to eventually produce enough for 10 gigawatts of new capacity every year. Arbor’s initial designs intended for Halcyon to subsist on a vegetarian diet — the power plant would ingest organic material like crop waste and wood scraps from farms and timber operations, which would be turned into syngas — a combustible gas mixture — and burned in the presence of pure oxygen. The result would be pure CO2, which could be captured and stored underground. Under that process, each Halcyon turbine would generate carbon negative power. The organic matter it consumes would otherwise have decayed, releasing methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Techcrunch event San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 Since then, Arbor has modified Halcyon to accept natural gas in addition to biomass — making it, in effect, more of an omnivore. The process otherwise remai...