The Buenos Aires-based company builds and deploys modular data centers co-located with remote energy production sites in Argentina. With wind and solar installations, Unblock taps “curtailed” energy, or the surplus that grids cannot handle, to power data centers (for context, see, “Spring Lane Capital commits $30 million to Soluna for green data centers”).
Unblock also works with oil and gas producers to capture gas that would otherwise be flared, and to turn it into power. Gas flaring is a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Unblock says it unlocks revenue for producers and prevents the release of more than 142,000 tons of emissions annually. “
We are at the crossroads of AI’s explosive energy demand and Latin America’s vast bottleneck energy resources,” said Unblock’s Tomas Ocampo. The company has partnered with Argentina oil producer Pluspetrol on a flare gas mitigation site in the country’s Vaca Muerta oil deposit, where generators were dumping excess electricity.
Waste to value
New York-based Collaborative Fund and Goldcrest Capital, a Dallas venture capital investor, led Unblock’s undisclosed investment round. “This investment felt so obvious to us, as it sits right in our sweet spot of ‘Good for You AND Good for the World,’” Craig Wilson of Collaborative Fund wrote.
Unblock has added 15 megawatts of installed capacity in the past year and aims to double that number by September.
Reflecting the strange bedfellows that such deals are bringing together, Argentinian energy companies Pampa Energia and Grupo Sielecki, joined the round with FJ Labs, Luxor Technology, Sunna Ventures, New York bitcoin financial services company NYDIG and several Latin American angel investors.
