Daylight Energy, a decentralized energy company focused on transforming homes into distributed power plants, announced it has raised $75 million to expand its crypto-powered network and introduce a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for renewable energy investments. The funding includes $15 million in equity financing led by Framework Ventures, with participation from a16z crypto, Lerer Hippeau, M13, Room40 Ventures, EV3, Crucible Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Not Boring Capital. Additionally, Turtle Hill Capital led a $60 million project development facility to support deployment.
The New York-based company aims to solve inefficiencies in the residential solar market by creating a decentralized network that aligns incentives between homeowners, financiers, and the grid. While distributed solar and energy storage systems can be deployed rapidly and at lower costs than traditional centralized power plants, widespread adoption has been hindered by high customer acquisition costs and slow financial returns. More than 60% of residential solar expenses stem from marketing and acquisition, forcing many homeowners to wait years before realizing savings.
Daylight Energy’s network seeks to address these challenges through a new decentralized model. The company offers homeowners solar and battery systems at no upfront cost through its energy subscription service, providing lower and more predictable monthly payments than traditional utilities. These customers also gain built-in backup power for outages. The company aggregates thousands of home batteries into a single network, enabling the sale of excess energy back to the grid during peak demand periods. This approach generates two revenue streams—steady subscription income from households and market-based payments from grid transactions—enabling Daylight to reduce costs and improve reliability.
The firm also unveiled DayFi, a yield protocol that opens energy infrastructure to decentralized finance markets. Through DayFi, investors can earn yield directly tied to electricity revenues from Daylight’s growing network of solar and storage systems. This model effectively turns electricity into a tradable asset class, giving decentralized investors exposure to real-world renewable energy growth.
Daylight’s incentive system further integrates blockchain principles. Homeowners currently earn “Sun Points” for participating and contributing to the network, with plans to introduce a native token that would allow direct ownership and participation in the network’s success.
The company is already financing subscriptions in Illinois and Massachusetts, both directly and through partnerships with local solar businesses. With the project finance facility now established, Daylight plans to expand into DeFi-based financing by the fourth quarter.
Daylight Energy envisions a future where distributed solar and storage create a global, decentralized grid supported by crypto-based incentives, financial transparency, and community ownership.
KEY QUOTES:
“To build the largest decentralized energy network in the world, you need to incentivize the behavior change to adopt distributed energy, and catalyze a huge amount of capital behind it. Crypto is uniquely good at doing those two things, and creates opportunities to align incentives, drive down costs, and rebuild this industry on a foundation of transparency, ownership, and shared economic upside.”
Jason Badeaux, CEO of Daylight Energy
“We believe Daylight has a credible path to becoming the financing layer for distributed energy. On one hand, it can unlock scale for installers and help offset energy costs for homeowners. At the same time, DeFi markets are seeking new, sustainable sources of on-chain yield, and DayFi offers a transparent way to access returns backed by real electricity revenues. As AI accelerates global power demand, and energy costs rise, we think Daylight is uniquely positioned to meet the moment by connecting capital to the next generation of renewable infrastructure.”
Vance Spencer, Co-Founder of Framework Ventures
“This is a dream project for a creative finance team, combining a novel business model, with purpose built specialty credit to accelerate distributed energy deployment. The stakes and potential impact are even more profound in a moment when traditional subsidy models face real uncertainty and change.”
Zeev Krieger, CEO of Turtle Hill Capital
