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Brookfield has agreed to acquire Aypa Power from Blackstone Energy Transition Partners for approximately $7 billion in enterprise value, or $3 billion in equity value, in one of the largest battery storage transactions to date.
Aypa is the largest standalone battery energy storage platform in North America, with roughly 6.5 GW of operating, under-construction and contracted capacity across the United States and Canada and a development pipeline exceeding 20 GW. Brookfield is acquiring the project portfolio, the development platform and the roughly 200-person team, and is pursuing the deal through its second global transition fund, which closed last year at $20 billion, alongside Brookfield Renewable Partners.
The company Brookfield is buying began life in Canada. Moe Hajabed founded NRStor C&I, which became the country's largest behind-the-meter energy storage developer, owner and operator, raising multiple rounds from two major investors, expanding into the US, and striking a partnership with Honeywell that produced what the company describes as the world's largest commercial and industrial battery storage deployment programme and the energy storage industry's first performance guarantee product.
Blackstone acquired the business in March 2020, when it had around 200 MWh of operational, in-construction and contracted projects, rebranding it Aypa Power and pivoting it toward utility-scale development from a new base in Texas.
Blackstone framed its original thesis around grid reliability and, latterly, the electricity demand created by AI. "We invested in Aypa based on our conviction that battery storage would become increasingly critical to supporting grid reliability and meeting growing electricity demand from AI and other use cases," said Bilal Khan and Mark Zhu of Blackstone, with Khan having also announced the original NRStor acquisition six years ago.
Hajabed grew up in Amman and moved to Canada for university, working as a senior VP at wholesale gas and electricity supplier Active Energy, where he built its commercial and industrial business, before founding NRStor C&I.
"Growing up in Amman, Jordan, and later moving to Canada for college, I always had ambition and drive, but I never imagined that one day I would have the privilege of founding and leading Aypa Power," he wrote of the sale on LinkedIn, calling the outcome bittersweet and describing the six years under Blackstone as an extraordinary journey.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and expected to close later this year. Cantor Fitzgerald acted as lead financial adviser to Aypa and Blackstone with BofA also advising, Kirkland & Ellis provided legal counsel, and White & Case advised Brookfield.
The exit adds to a growing record of Jordanian-born founders building at global scale from outside the Kingdom. It’s a pattern the country’s institutions have been trying to convert into domestic activity, with the state-backed Innovative Startups and SMEs Fund committing $7 million to Endeavor Catalyst V last month and partnering with STV this week to bring the Saudi firm's Google-backed AI Fund to Jordanian founders.
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