Viridi is designing a grid for the next hundred years
Viridi does something nobody else can do. Not Tesla. Not Panasonic. Not anybody.
It has developed failsafe energy storage units that can go inside buildings at commercial scale.
That means its customers can leverage the inefficiency of the electrical grid — buying and storing power when rates are low – while also providing backup energy.
That’s why there’s so much power in its potential.
It’s why there’s so much juice behind its ascension.
It’s why Viridi — which recently announced a 100-unit contract with commercial developer Budderfly – suddenly has more than 100 employees at its East Side plant, hit $35 million in sales in 2025 and expects a vast expansion in its footprint over the next two years.
“Everything we do every day intersects with energy,” said Jon M. Williams, Founder & CEO. “Up until recently that intersection with energy was from the top down.”
Low price/kWh overnight? The Viridi battery starts pulling and storing some energy. Peak price/kWh when it’s 95 degrees and every air conditioner in the city is running? Start running on the stored battery power.
It’s an application with strong use cases across many markets. That means Viridi has almost no ceiling.
Take their successful pilot and implementation with the Erie County Lift Station, for example. With Viridi's BESS installed, the Erie County Lift Station has in its hands all energy and historical information, so it decides when to take power, how much, and at what cost. Williams estimates there are ~7,500 lift stations in New York State alone.
“If we just did lift stations, we’d have hundreds of millions of dollars in sales,” he said. “There is not a segment we have gone into and not seen success. It’s just smart energy.”
Williams thinks about growth within a sector in three phases:
As Viridi gets to scaling, a lot of Western New Yorkers stand to benefit. Much of Viridi's backing is homegrown. Tom Golisano, the Paychex founder and philanthropist, led the company's growth rounds through his Grand Oaks Capital. The Western New York Impact Investment Fund has been in since the early days and put another $1 million in this year. The cap table has a meaningful share of the upside flowing back into the region rather than out of it.
Local customers include NOCO, Erie County, City of Buffalo, and the Hauptman-Woodward Institute, to name a few.
And then there are the jobs. The plant sits in the former American Axle complex on East Delavan. Viridi employs about 120 people in Buffalo and another 30 to 35 elsewhere.
“We know this works,” said Williams. “We know we’re the safest on the market. And we know if we put our packs behind the meter we can dramatically change the way energy is consumed and used.”
