Singapore’s Blue Whale Energy Raises $4 Mn to Ease Grid Constraints on Data Centre Growth

Blue Whale Energy, a Singapore start-up that installs and runs batteries at commercial and industrial sites, has raised $4 Mn in seed funding to expand its battery network. Rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centres is opening a market for alternatives to conventional grid upgrades, and Blue Whale is building one.

The start-up, founded by Gabriel Lim, former chief executive of sales software company Saleswhale, secured backing from new investors Wavemaker Partners, SG Growth Capital’s SEEDS investment platform and ADB Ventures. Existing investors Analog Ventures (formerly Forge Ventures), Monk’s Hill Ventures and UntroD Capital also participated in the round.

Wavemaker Partners is a Singapore-based venture firm, while ADB Ventures is the Asian Development Bank’s venture arm. SEEDS sits within SG Growth Capital, the investment platform of the Economic Development Board (EDB) and Enterprise Singapore, and invests only alongside private/corporate venture funds, which lead the rounds. That model puts Singapore state money into early-stage companies only where private investors are prepared to lead.

Lim announced the funding on October 19, saying the round had closed a few months ago. The start-up did not disclose its current valuation or individual investors’ contributions.

Blue Whale announced a $2 Mn seed round in October 2025, led by Forge Ventures at the time. It has not clarified whether the latest $4 Mn figure includes the earlier financing.

The start-up is building a network of battery energy storage systems installed at commercial and industrial premises across Singapore. Its software connects these installations, allowing them to operate collectively as a virtual power plant instead of operating as individual storage units.

The business addresses a growing constraint for Singapore’s digital economy: the availability of electricity infrastructure where new data centres and other energy-intensive facilities want to expand. Blue Whale says local network constraints can leave operators waiting five years or more for the upgrades they need.

Unlike typical power generation projects, Blue Whale does not add new power supply. Instead, batteries installed at partner premises can supply power during peak demand, reducing the electricity they draw from congested grids.

The batteries can recharge when network demand is lower, potentially releasing capacity during the periods when local electricity infrastructure is most constrained.

For commercial property owners, the model offers an opportunity to generate revenue from hosting batteries and participating in electricity market services. Blue Whale develops and operates the installations at no upfront cost to the host sites, co-ordinating their performance through its technology platform.

The company already has battery systems deployed at commercial and industrial locations across Singapore, including a cold-storage facility in Jurong, a retail site in Tampines and an office building in Aljunied, according to its website.

Lim said projects currently under construction would increase the company’s installed capacity tenfold within six to eight weeks of the announcement. He also expects the expansion to make Blue Whale Singapore’s leading behind-the-meter battery energy storage developer by the end of 2026. Behind-the-meter batteries sit on the customer’s side of the electricity meter and serve the host site directly.

The company has not disclosed its current installed capacity in MW or MWh, and no independent party has verified its projected market position.

The Data Centre Opportunity

Blue Whale is developing a system it calls Bring Your Own Capacity (BYOC), which aims to use batteries at businesses near data centres to relieve local electricity network constraints.

Under the proposed model, batteries would be installed at sites connected to the same constrained part of the electricity network as a data centre. During peak periods, those batteries would supply electricity to their host businesses, reducing demand on the shared network.

If the reduction is sufficiently reliable, it could allow data centres to access additional usable electricity capacity without waiting for every planned network upgrade to be completed.

The approach is commercially significant because data centres need dependable electricity around the clock, while the infrastructure serving them must handle periods of particularly high demand. Blue Whale estimates that every 20 MW of data centre capacity left waiting for power could forgo about $79 Mn a year in potential rental revenue if fully leased, before costs. The figure applies $330 per kW a month, the lower end of CBRE’s published Singapore range, and is an illustration, not a customer result.

The city-state wants to attract more data centre investment while coping with energy and sustainability hurdles. In December 2025, EDB and the Infocomm Media Development Authority came up with a second application round, offering at least 200 MW of additional data centre capacity. Further expansion may come through green energy solutions.

In August 2026, these agencies provisionally allocated 50 MW each to Digital Realty, Equinix, Keppel Data Centres and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres for Jurong Island facilities out of 20-plus proposals.

Blue Whale’s proposed system fits into this broader effort to improve the use of existing electricity infrastructure, although it has yet to demonstrate its ability to unlock additional data centre capacity. The model has a precedent in the US, where Google signed a three-year agreement with Voltus in 2026 to unlock up to 100 MW of capacity from distributed energy resources on the grid run by PJM Interconnection. PJM operates North America’s largest power grid, serving about 67 Mn people across 13 states and the District of Columbia.

The Singapore start-up plans to begin a self-funded BYOC pilot with AI data centre partners in the first quarter of 2027. The programme will test how reliably its distributed batteries can respond to simulated grid instructions and measure the resulting reduction in demand on the local network. It will also test how the fleet responds when communications are interrupted or individual batteries are unavailable.

Any additional usable electricity capacity would require assessment and approval by the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and SP Group, which operates Singapore’s power grid. The company has not claimed that BYOC has already secured such approval.

From Regulatory Testing to Commercial Deployment

Blue Whale is also participating in Singapore’s Virtual Power Plant Regulatory Sandbox, which EMA introduced in October 2025.

The two-year programme, involving Blue Whale, Nanyang Technological University and SP Group, tests how distributed energy resources can co-ordinate to provide electricity and ancillary services to the national grid.

EMA has identified virtual power plants as a potential way to improve the commercial viability of smaller energy assets that may lack the scale to participate independently in electricity markets.

By aggregating these resources, operators could enable batteries and other distributed assets to provide services collectively, creating additional revenue opportunities while supporting grid stability.

For Blue Whale, participation provides an opportunity to test its technology within Singapore’s regulated electricity system. However, the sandbox’s approval to test virtual power plant services is separate from any future authorisation to unlock additional power capacity for data centres.

The company is also a registered participant in Singapore’s wholesale electricity market, where co-ordinated battery systems can potentially earn revenue by responding to electricity demand and market conditions.

Its expansion will, therefore, depend on two related but distinct commercial opportunities: generating returns from battery storage and electricity market participation, and demonstrating that distributed storage can provide dependable relief to constrained networks.

The first offers a business model for operating batteries at commercial premises. The second could create a new market among data centre operators seeking access to electricity capacity.

Blue Whale intends to establish the model in Singapore before following its data centre customers into other Asian markets where they face similar constraints.

The funding raised can support that expansion, but the tougher commercial test lies ahead. The start-up must prove that its network can deliver reliable, measurable capacity and that the value it creates exceeds the cost of deploying and operating batteries across multiple sites.