Startup plans first prototype by year-end, deliveries in 2028
California startup Parallax has raised $117 million to enter the market for gas turbines, betting that 3-D printing can produce smaller, faster-to-build units for data centers that face years-long waits for equipment from industrial incumbents.
The funding round comes as data-center developers, locked out of grid connections that can stretch for years, turn to on-site power generation — an approach industry participants call “Bring Your Own Power.” The market for the large turbines used at power plants has multiyear backlogs, much of it driven by demand from artificial-intelligence data centers.
Parallax was founded earlier this year by Carl Schoeller, a Stanford University graduate who previously co-founded a defense hardware company. In an interview, Schoeller said his company is not trying to replicate the highly efficient turbines that major manufacturers build for power plants and aircraft. Instead, he wants to make something smaller — generating about 10 megawatts of electricity — that could be built faster, with cheaper materials and shipped in standard shipping containers.
The company’s pitch rests on simplifying the hardware. Schoeller said a traditional gas-turbine core has more than 2,000 parts, while Parallax’s design would use 3-D printing to reduce the part count to a handful. The Parallax turbine would run at lower combustion temperatures than a utility-scale unit, which reduces fuel efficiency but lets the company use more common materials and tap into broad supply chains, including those of the aerospace industry, he said.
“That’s really our key differentiator,” Schoeller said. “We don’t have to design for a utility. We don’t have to design for aircraft. We get to design for this customer.”
With the $117 million round, Parallax aims to build its first prototype by the end of the year, test it next year and deliver to customers in 2028, Schoeller said. Many Parallax units would be required at each data-center site, because developers are looking for hundreds to thousands of megawatts of capacity per location.
The race for that capacity is drawing in larger competitors. Established manufacturers such as Caterpillar and Cummins are pivoting their businesses to feed a market for once-prosaic power equipment. Elon Musk said recently on X that SpaceX, which has purchased a turbine manufacturer, will start making the blades and vanes that go into natural-gas-fired power turbines.
Generac shares soared last week after the company reached a long-term deal to supply generators to Amazon.com for its data centers. Generac said it expects initial deliveries of backup generators to total $2.4 billion in 2027 and 2028.
Lior Susan, founder and chief executive of Eclipse, which invested in Parallax, said neither chip makers nor the power industry are adding enough capacity to meet the demands of AI data centers, which has left the market “starved.”
“Building a gas turbine is freaking hard, but if you can do it well, naturally it can be a gigantic business,” Susan said. He compared Parallax’s plans for “parts consolidation” with SpaceX’s approach to the rocket engine. Other Parallax investors include Lux Capital, Founders Fund, Greylock Partners and General Catalyst.
Data-center developers and technology companies have been locking down power-generation equipment — from turbines to reciprocating engines and fuel cells — as they race to connect their facilities to electricity sources as quickly as possible.
The broader scramble is reshaping the supplier landscape. Once-routine orders for industrial equipment now carry multiyear waits, and entrants from adjacent industries, including Musk’s space company, are moving to claim a share of the demand that hyperscalers and their developers have created.