Petra Power Banks on Fuel Cells, $9M in Defense Contracts

By Amara Osei

Petra Power has racked up nearly $9 million in U.S. Defense Department contracts for its solid oxide fuel cells and is aiming to deploy the ceramic power units at neocloud data centers by 2028, founder Aaron Goodman told TechCrunch.

The 2017-founded, 15-person startup pitches the ceramic devices as a more efficient, environmentally friendly alternative to turbines for compute facilities and large military vehicles. Full-scale production is targeted for 2029, Goodman said.

The pitch lands as the hunt intensifies for efficient, cost-effective power sources for AI. Goodman said companies running on fuel cells stand to save "a significant amount" on fuel costs, and he noted the units carry a smaller physical footprint than turbines because they're compact and lightweight — a selling point at sites where space carries a premium.

How do solid oxide fuel cells work?

Petra's units convert fuel, primarily natural gas, into electricity without burning it. Goodman laid out the chemistry in a single step. "What fuel cells do is they take the electrons directly off of the fuel, so they strip the fuel of its electrons, which creates electricity," he said. "It's one step, no loss, and subsequently, in theory, at least, they're much, much more efficient."

Conventional generation, by contrast, runs through four transformations. "Combustion takes fuel and creates explosions," Goodman said. "Those explosions create heat. That heat creates motion. The motion powers an electromotive force, which eventually creates electricity. It's a lot of steps, and they all have so much loss in them that you end up with a really inefficient system."

Where does Petra sit in the data-center stack?

The company is courting two distinct customer sets:

• Neoclouds and infrastructure providers — Petra's immediate 2028 deployment target. Goodman wouldn't name the partners but said they sit "a few steps down from the hyperscaler crowd."
• Hyperscalers — the long game. "Hyperscalers are an ICP [ideal customer profile] for us, and we talk a lot to them, but we don't have anything firm with them yet," Goodman said. "Obviously, they're the largest consumers of power."

He added that hyperscalers are "the ones that we can make the biggest impact with, so that's where we'd like to go." For now, the company is still "kind of working in that direction."

What's the Defense Department angle?

The government work centers on auxiliary power for land vehicles — onboard electricity for radios, sensors, and other gear when the main engine is off. Goodman clarified that no live-vehicle deployment has happened yet. The fuel cells remain in a testing phase, and the Defense Department is weighing whether to move forward.

The roughly $9 million in DoD contracts to date backs that work. Petra is hiring, and the goal is to scale those awards "significantly in the coming years," Goodman said. That headcount expansion will be critical if both the 2028 commercial and the eventual DoD vehicle program hit their marks.

What's next for Petra?

Petra was selected for TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield 200, a cohort of 200 startups that pitches this coming week at Moscone West in downtown San Francisco. The team will have a chance to put a price tag on its roadmap there.

If the neocloud deployments land on the 2028 timeline, Petra would move solid oxide fuel-cell generation from defense testing into commercial compute. That's the proof point Goodman is betting will help him close the hyperscaler deals that have so far stayed just out of reach.