Month: January 2026

Former Managing Partner of Skadden’s Palo Alto office joins Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt’s space-based energy infrastructure company to lead worldwide operations, legal and regulatory affairs

SAN CARLOS, Calif., Jan. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Aetherflux, the space-based solar power company founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, today announced the appointment of Joe Yaffe as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Legal Officer (CLO). In this dual executive role, Yaffe will oversee the company’s worldwide operations, legal, and regulatory affairs. Yaffe’s appointment follows Aetherlux’s recent $90M Series A financing and the announcement that it is targeting Q1 2027 for the first launch of its “Galactic Brain” orbital data center project.

“Aetherflux is tackling two of the hardest problems in the modern world: energy abundance and the infrastructure for next-generation compute. The world-class team we are building is critical to our approach,” said Baiju Bhatt, Founder and CEO of Aetherflux. “Joe brings a rare combination of operational discipline and strategic judgment, having guided companies through their most complex stages of growth. I am excited to welcome him as a partner to help us navigate the next frontier of the space economy.”

Yaffe joins Aetherflux following a distinguished career as the Managing Partner of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP’s Palo Alto office. With over three decades of experience, he has advised high-growth technology companies, founders, and boards on critical governance, strategic transactions, and compensation issues. His move to an executive operator role underscores Aetherflux’s focus on building the organizational and regulatory infrastructure required to successfully harness and commercialize space-based solar power. Yaffe will be based out of the company’s headquarters in San Carlos, California.

“Joining Aetherflux is a rare opportunity to contribute to a mission that will fundamentally change how humanity accesses and uses energy, and is uniquely poised to solve the energy crisis hindering the race to artificial intelligence,” said Joe Yaffe, incoming COO and CLO. “Baiju and the team are rewriting the playbook for orbital infrastructure, and I look forward to building the operational backbone that turns this vision into a reality.”

Aetherflux recently announced a Q1 2027 target for its first orbital data center satellite, which leverages solar power in space to address the massive energy needs for artificial intelligence. The project, dubbed “Galactic Brain”, offers a bypass to the current five-to-eight-year time horizon for data centers to be built on Earth. This builds upon the company’s existing work developing space-solar satellites for beaming power to contested environments. In 2026, the company plans to launch its first satellite to wirelessly transmit energy from low Earth orbit to Earth using lasers.

About Aetherflux
Aetherflux is revolutionizing energy distribution by harvesting solar power in space and beaming it to Earth via infrared lasers. Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt, the company is building a constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to provide resilient, scalable power to remote or contested environments around the world.. Backed by Index Ventures, NEA, and other leading investors, Aetherflux is also pioneering the “Galactic Brain,” an orbital compute network powered by space solar to support the growing energy demands of artificial intelligence.

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SOURCE Aetherflux

Texture and WattTime have partnered to bring real-time marginal CO₂ emissions intelligence directly into the Texture platform. Energy services companies can view emissions impact alongside normalized energy data across sites, devices, and portfolios, with no additional setup required. The integration supports clearer operational decision-making, sustainability reporting, and planning by embedding trusted grid emissions data directly into existing workflows.

NEW YORK, Jan. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Energy services companies are increasingly incorporating emissions considerations into how they operate, plan, and report. Yet it remains challenging to connect real-time emissions data with day-to-day operational insights and site-level decisions. Texture and WattTime are partnering to address that challenge.

This collaboration brings WattTime’s trusted real-time marginal emissions data directly into the Texture platform, enabling customers to view and act on emissions impact alongside their core energy data — without additional integration work or system configuration.

What This Partnership Enables

The integration allows energy services companies to access emissions intelligence within the same workflows they already use to manage sites, devices, and operational insights in Texture.

Joint Value Highlights

• Real-time emissions visibility: View marginal CO₂ emissions data, supplied by WattTime, directly within Texture.
• Operational context: Emissions data is automatically layered onto normalized energy data (sites, devices, utility bills), enabling clearer understanding of environmental impact.
• Improved decision-making: Organizations can evaluate the emissions implications of consumption patterns, scheduling, and distributed energy operations.
• Scalable and pre-configured: All Texture workspaces include WattTime-powered emissions signals — no extra setup required.

Why This Matters for Energy Services Companies

Integrating emissions data into operational workflows has historically required custom pipelines, manual modeling, or separate systems that don’t align well with day-to-day energy management. For energy services companies, this creates friction: emissions insights may exist, but they often sit outside the context of the operational data needed to act on them.

With Texture, this process becomes significantly more streamlined. The platform already normalizes site, device, and utility data into a consistent structure. By enriching this data with WattTime’s real-time emissions signals, Texture enables organizations to view environmental impact directly alongside operational performance—within a single, unified interface.

This helps energy services companies interpret emissions data more clearly, compare it across portfolios, and incorporate it into reporting, planning, and potential automation use cases without additional integration work. The result is a more practical and accessible way to bring emissions intelligence into both strategic and day-to-day decision-making.

PULL QUOTE:
“Our team has a shared mission to make actionable power grid emissions data as accessible and easy to use as possible, and our partnership with Texture is helping to do just that,” said WattTime’s vice president of strategic growth, Laura Corso. “Texture’s users can now access highly granular data to make more informed decisions about a variety of power grid interventions and find out how their actions affect or, ideally, reduce carbon emissions.”

What’s Available Today

Through the partnership, real-time marginal CO₂ emissions data from WattTime is now incorporated directly into Texture’s Signals framework. This means that emissions impact is automatically available across sites, devices, and portfolio-level views the moment an organization begins using Texture.

Rather than exposing raw data, Texture calculates emissions metrics using WattTime inputs in a way that aligns with partner data agreements while still providing customers with the insights they need. Energy services companies can use this information to assess operational impact, understand consumption patterns in relation to grid emissions, and support internal or customer-facing sustainability reporting.

In addition to what’s currently available, Texture will also introduce avoided emissions metrics in the future. This will give organizations a more complete picture of environmental performance over time and strengthen long-term impact analysis.

About WattTime

WattTime is an environmental tech nonprofit that provides real-time and historical grid emissions data. Founded by UC Berkeley researchers, WattTime develops tools that help organizations incorporate emissions intelligence into energy and sustainability decision-making.

About Texture

Texture is a platform to automate complex grid operations. The platform integrates, normalizes, and enriches data from devices, meters, and markets, giving energy service companies the real-time intelligence needed to manage their networks scale. Texture enables its customers to streamline program operations, improve grid reliability, and deploy advanced energy workflows with confidence.

Get Started

Start incorporating emissions intelligence into your operations today. WattTime-powered emissions signals are available now across all Texture workspaces, with no configuration required. Schedule a demo with Texture to learn more.

Media Contact

Jes Hudgins, Director, Delivery & Ops

press@texturehq.com

https://www.texturehq.com/press

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SOURCE Texture

Three agreements will bring up to 6.6 GW of nuclear generation to the grid by 2035

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CEBA, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, applauds Meta on its latest commitment to clean energy procurement — one of the largest corporate clean energy purchases in U.S. history. This investment of 6.6 GW of clean, reliable nuclear power onto the grid underscores how CEBA members are stepping up to meet rapidly growing electricity demand — supporting economic growth while strengthening U.S. competitiveness in the global technology race.

This announcement builds on the momentum of CEBA members’ collective procurement of more than 24 GW of clean energy in 2025. Additionally, Meta’s commitment to innovative advanced nuclear technology highlights a trend of corporate energy buyers driving solutions now and for the future. Last year, CEBA saw over 3 GW of corporate procurement of clean firm generation, such as nuclear, geothermal, and hydro.

While CEBA anticipates another banner year in 2026, CEBA and our members recognize that scaling these solutions will require continued progress on commonsense yet critical policies and market structures. Advancing these frameworks is essential to accelerating the deployment of low-cost, affordable, and carbon emissions–free power at the pace and scale the U.S. economy requires.

We commend Meta for its leadership and this important milestone, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration to drive meaningful, durable progress toward a cleaner, more reliable energy future.

QUOTE FROM RICH POWELL, CEO, CEBA

“Meta’s latest commitment — bringing 6.6 GW of reliable and advanced nuclear power to the grid — is one of the largest corporate purchases of clean energy in history and demonstrates the critical role energy buyers are playing in meeting growing electricity demand and supporting economic growth,” said Rich Powell, CEBA CEO.

“This historic announcement builds on the more than 24 GW of clean energy procured by CEBA members last year and demonstrates how CEBA members are investing to meet growing electricity demand now and into the future. These investments support U.S. economic growth and global competitiveness, and we applaud Meta’s leadership and look forward to continuing our collaboration to deliver affordable, carbon emissions-free power that will strengthen grid reliability and accelerate clean energy deployment.”

The Clean Energy Buyers Association is a business trade association that activates a community of energy customers and partners to deploy market and policy solutions for a carbon emissions-free energy system. CEBA’s members represent $38 trillion in market capitalization and include institutional energy customers of every type and size — corporate and industrial companies, universities, and cities. For more information, visit cebuyers.org and follow us on X and LinkedIn. 

Contact:
Susan Buehler
sbuehler@cebuyers.org

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ceba-commends-metas-historic-clean-energy-announcement-302657407.html

SOURCE Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA)

Three agreements will bring up to 6.6 GW of nuclear generation to the grid by 2035

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CEBA, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, applauds Meta on its latest commitment to clean energy procurement — one of the largest corporate clean energy purchases in U.S. history. This investment of 6.6 GW of clean, reliable nuclear power onto the grid underscores how CEBA members are stepping up to meet rapidly growing electricity demand — supporting economic growth while strengthening U.S. competitiveness in the global technology race.

This announcement builds on the momentum of CEBA members’ collective procurement of more than 24 GW of clean energy in 2025. Additionally, Meta’s commitment to innovative advanced nuclear technology highlights a trend of corporate energy buyers driving solutions now and for the future. Last year, CEBA saw over 3 GW of corporate procurement of clean firm generation, such as nuclear, geothermal, and hydro.

While CEBA anticipates another banner year in 2026, CEBA and our members recognize that scaling these solutions will require continued progress on commonsense yet critical policies and market structures. Advancing these frameworks is essential to accelerating the deployment of low-cost, affordable, and carbon emissions–free power at the pace and scale the U.S. economy requires.

We commend Meta for its leadership and this important milestone, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration to drive meaningful, durable progress toward a cleaner, more reliable energy future.

QUOTE FROM RICH POWELL, CEO, CEBA

“Meta’s latest commitment — bringing 6.6 GW of reliable and advanced nuclear power to the grid — is one of the largest corporate purchases of clean energy in history and demonstrates the critical role energy buyers are playing in meeting growing electricity demand and supporting economic growth,” said Rich Powell, CEBA CEO.

“This historic announcement builds on the more than 24 GW of clean energy procured by CEBA members last year and demonstrates how CEBA members are investing to meet growing electricity demand now and into the future. These investments support U.S. economic growth and global competitiveness, and we applaud Meta’s leadership and look forward to continuing our collaboration to deliver affordable, carbon emissions-free power that will strengthen grid reliability and accelerate clean energy deployment.”

The Clean Energy Buyers Association is a business trade association that activates a community of energy customers and partners to deploy market and policy solutions for a carbon emissions-free energy system. CEBA’s members represent $38 trillion in market capitalization and include institutional energy customers of every type and size — corporate and industrial companies, universities, and cities. For more information, visit cebuyers.org and follow us on X and LinkedIn. 

Contact:
Susan Buehler
sbuehler@cebuyers.org

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ceba-commends-metas-historic-clean-energy-announcement-302657407.html

SOURCE Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA)