Estonian energy storage firm Skeleton becomes unicorn with Siemens deal

Siemens has bought into Skeleton Technologies, an Estonian maker of energy storage systems. With this, the deal values Skeleton at more than $1 billion, its CEO Taavi Madiberk told Bloomberg.

The deal closed this month and was worth more than $100 million, the company said, but it did not give the exact figure.

In return, Siemens can sell Skeleton’s high-power storage systems to data centres, and no one else can, Siemens tech chief Peter Koerte told Bloomberg.

Skeleton’s systems help data centres smooth out sudden swings in power use and reduce energy waste.

“What we see is that also up to 40% more compute can be had on the chips if the power management is done right and the energy is not burned off,” Madiberk said.

Skeleton says it works with all the big US cloud firms, and that its kit will soon be used across a gigawatt of data centre capacity.

Skeleton plans to spend more than $200 million on growing in the US, including building factories there, Madiberk said. Bloomberg reported in March that the company is aiming for a US stock market listing next year.

The two firms have already worked together on Skeleton’s €220 million plant near Leipzig, Germany, where Siemens helped build an automated production line. Siemens wants to sell data centres as a full package, Koerte said. It already supplies them with power gear and design software.

“We don’t need the next OpenAI right now, what we need is the next generation of AI, which will primarily operate at the application level,” Koerte said. “We need to further expand the infrastructure.”

Skeleton was founded 17 years ago, and it brings together more than 10 Estonian tech companies valued at over $1 billion, a high number for a country of 1.3 million people. Rising power demand from AI is putting pressure on grids and data centre builders across Europe.

Other big tech groups are also investing in Europe’s AI build-out. This week, Nvidia announced new European investments, including stakes in four French startups.