Bloom Energy manufactures solid oxide fuel cells that generate electricity on site, bypassing the utility interconnection queue that now governs large-load construction schedules. Founded in San Jose, California in 2001 and listed on the NYSE, the company supplies data centers, manufacturers, hospitals and utilities, with customers including AEP, AT&T, Equinix, CoreWeave, Medtronic and Delmarva Power. Its equipment is increasingly specified as primary rather than backup power. Oracle’s Project Jupiter campus in southern New Mexico swapped a gas-turbine-and-diesel configuration for a Bloom fuel cell microgrid on a planned on-site resource exceeding 2 GW. The company also builds electrolyzers and combined heat and power systems.
Bloom’s own timeline puts the starting point at NASA-derived work: in 2001 Dr. K.R. Sridhar, at the University of Arizona, developed a CO2-to-oxygen electrolyzer intended for Mars missions. The fuel cell business grew out of that. A 5 kW field trial unit shipped to the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga in 2006. The Energy Server launched commercially in 2008 with deployments at Google, Walmart, Coca-Cola, FedEx and Bank of America.
The build-out since then has been a steady sequence of firsts. Bloom completed its first microgrid at Owens Corning in 2011. It broke ground on the Delaware Manufacturing Center in 2012. Its first international project came in 2013, in Japan with SoftBank, alongside its first mission-critical data centre microgrid. A community microgrid in Hartford, Connecticut followed in 2016. The company listed on the NYSE under ticker BE in 2018. The Fremont, California multi-gigawatt facility opened in 2022. In 2024 Bloom and American Electric Power signed an agreement for up to 1 GW of fuel cells.
The product architecture is modular in a literal sense. Individual solid oxide fuel cells are combined into stacks, stacks into modules, and modules into the Energy Server platform, which is how capacity scales on a site without redesigning the system. The cells run on natural gas, biogas or hydrogen without combustion.
Beyond the server itself, the company sells into a set of distinct applications: AlwaysON microgrids, primary power, heat capture for combined heat and power, carbon capture (the fuel cell produces a concentrated CO2 stream, which is the enabling detail), electrolyzers, biogas energy, certified gas and marine fuel cells. Named industry verticals include data centres, manufacturing, biotech and biopharma, chemicals, education, healthcare, oil and gas, retail, tech/media/telecom and utilities.
Two 2026 announcements are relevant to anyone scheduling an installation. In August Bloom introduced Power Connect, a deployment system it says cuts onsite power installation time by more than 40 percent. In September it published a report arguing that its 800V DC-native fuel cell configuration removes the need for transformers at AI data centres and reduces non-compute capital expenditure for a 1 GW facility by $3.6 billion, or 27 percent.
Customer case studies on the company’s site include JSR Micro, Stop & Shop, which converted 40 stores to AlwaysON microgrids, The Home Depot, and Equinix.
