After spending much of my career in the heart of the technology industry, helping companies like Apple and Qualcomm take innovations from early promise to global scale, I recently made a move that, on the surface, might look like a step into a completely different world: I joined the energy sector. What has surprised me most is not how unfamiliar it feels, but how deeply familiar it is.

Energy storage today feels a lot like tech did at the start of its great acceleration. The technology has been proven. The value is clear. The market is no longer asking whether it works, but whether it can scale—reliably, economically, and everywhere. That shift, from proof to platform, is one I have seen before.

From “Does it Work?” to “Can it Scale?”

For much of the last two decades, storage has been in a proving phase: proving it can be safe, proving it can perform, proving it can deliver real value to the grid. Thanks to the pioneers of this industry who have worked tirelessly to innovate and validate the technology, that foundation is now solid.

The question in front of us is a different one, and in many ways a harder one: how do we move from impressive individual projects to global fleets of assets that perform predictably across markets and over decades, making storage not just deployable, but truly repeatable and bankable at scale?

This is exactly the transition the tech sector faced before its largest growth wave. The question shifted from “Can we build this?” to “Can we build it everywhere, consistently, and at speed?” The companies that ultimately led were not defined by hardware alone. They won by mastering systems, software, and operating models that could scale with confidence.

When Demand Becomes Mission-Critical

We are now seeing a similar demand shock in energy. The rise of AI-driven data centers, the rapid pace of electrification, and the global build-out of renewables are pushing power systems in ways they were never designed for. Demand is not growing politely. It is surging.

In tech, when platforms became mission-critical, “good enough” stopped being good enough. Reliability, predictability, and resilience became non-negotiable. Energy storage has crossed that same threshold. It is no longer a supporting actor on the grid. It is becoming core infrastructure for a digital economy that cannot afford instability.

You can already see this shift happening on the ground. In Arizona, for example, Fluence technology is at the heart of Ørsted’s Eleven Mile Solar Center, one of the state’s largest co-located solar-plus-storage facilities. The project’s massive 1,200 MWh Gridstack system provides the grid stability needed to support a regional Meta data center, while also supplying peak power for roughly 65,000 homes. This is what mission-critical looks like in practice: storage acting as a foundational layer that enables both digital growth and grid reliability at the same time.

From Hardware to System Intelligence

Answering this call for scalable, mission-critical infrastructure requires a shift in focus. What ultimately enables technology to scale is not just better hardware, but the intelligence that connects, controls, and optimizes it as a unified system. The same is now true for energy storage. System-level software, advanced controls, and predictive analytics are turning individual assets into coordinated, high-performing fleets and are becoming just as important as the batteries themselves.

Energy storage is now entering this system-intelligence era. We are moving toward a software-defined grid, where advanced Power Plant Controllers (PPCs) orchestrate hundreds of megawatts of storage with sub-second precision, allowing dispersed assets to behave like a single, grid-forming resource. This layer of intelligence enables complex services such as frequency response, synthetic inertia, and voltage support to be delivered reliably and repeatedly across markets. What once required bespoke engineering is increasingly embedded in standardized, upgradable software platforms.

Looking ahead, digital twins—virtual replicas of physical systems—have the potential to extend that intelligence even further. By simulating asset behavior, grid interactions, and operating scenarios before a project is built, developers and operators can validate performance, de-risk interconnection, and optimize designs early. In the tech world, this kind of virtual modeling was what compressed development cycles and accelerated time to market. In energy, it can play a similar role, making system intelligence a catalyst for speed to power, while maintaining the safety, reliability, and predictability that mission-critical infrastructure demands.

From Projects to Partnerships to Ecosystems

This evolution in technology is driving a parallel evolution in how customers operate. As storage becomes more intelligent and integral to the grid, the relationship naturally moves beyond simple transactions toward long-term partnerships and broader ecosystems. In the early days of technology, companies bought products. As their dependence grew, they began managing global platforms and looked for partners who could support them over the full lifecycle—across sites, markets, and years.

Large energy users and utilities are now on that same journey. They are moving beyond one-off battery installations toward multi-site, multi-year strategies that demand consistent performance, standardized solutions, and deep operational expertise. A great example is Fluence’s selection by AMPYR Australia for the 300 MW / 600 MWh Bulabul battery storage project. This partnership goes far beyond just delivering hardware. It combines our grid-scale storage with a 20-year service agreement, AI-powered market bidding through our Mosaic platform, and ongoing asset performance optimization via Nispera.

For customers like AMPYR—whose plans include deploying thousands of megawatt-hours of storage over the coming decade—this kind of partnership model is essential. It provides portfolio-level visibility, predictable performance, and shared accountability over the full life of the asset. In this new era, we are not just suppliers delivering individual projects. We are long-term partners, embedded in the resilience, economics, and growth strategies of the infrastructure our customers rely on.

The Road Ahead

I am still early in my journey in this industry, and I am learning every day from the veterans who turned energy storage from a niche idea into a critical reality. Their experience is what made this moment possible.

Energy storage is entering its acceleration phase. Demand is rising quickly. Expectations are rising even faster. By combining the hard-won lessons of those who built this industry with the scaling playbook forged in previous waves of technological growth, we have an opportunity not just to grow fast, but to build something that is resilient, repeatable, and ready for the role it is now being asked to play.