May 2, 2026 Update: AI Power Deals Are Getting Bigger and More Diverse This market moved fast after this article first published. Form Energy added a 12 GWh iron-air deal tied to Crusoe's AI infrastructure buildout, Google-backed long-duration storage plans in Minnesota became a flagship proof point for hyperscaler-scale procurement, and battery suppliers kept broadening the menu of chemistries pitched to data centres. The pattern is getting clearer: the AI buildout is not creating one battery winner, it is creating a stack of use cases that reward different chemistries for backup, daily shifting, and multi-day resilience. The battery industry is being reshaped by an unlikely customer: the data centre. In the span of a single week in late February 2026, three announcements made it clear that large-scale energy storage is no longer just about the electric grid or EVs. Tech companies and colocation operators are driving some of the largest battery deals in history, pulling in chemistries from iron-air to lithium-sulfur to iron-sodium. Lyten's acquisition of Northvolt's Swedish operations, Xcel Energy's 30 GWh iron-air deployment for a Google data centre, and Inlyte Energy's pilot with Swiss operator NTS Colocation all point to the same conclusion: data centres are becoming the battery industry's most important new market. And in early March, officials celebrated continued progress on the Form Energy deal as construction preparations advance. Battery storage systems are increasingly co-located with data centre campuses. Image: AI-generated Lyten Revives Northvolt Ett, Plans 1 GW Data Centre Hub US battery startup Lyten completed its acquisition of Northvolt's business operations in Sweden on February 27, ending months of uncertainty about the fate of Europe's most ambitious homegrown battery manufacturer. The deal gives Lyten control of the Northvolt Ett gigafactory in Skellefteå and the company's R&D laboratories in Västerås. The acquisition covers the 16 GWh Skellefteå factory, making it the largest battery manufacturing operation ever acquired in a single deal in Europe. The immediate plan is practical: NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) cells produced at Northvolt Ett will supply Northvolt Dwa, the BESS production facility in Poland that Lyten acquired last year. Commercial shipments are expected in the second half of 2026. The R&D labs in Västerås will continue NMC development while collaborating with Lyten's Silicon Valley team on scaling lithium-sulfur battery technology. The Northvolt Ett factory in Skellefteå now operates under Lyten ownership. Image: AI-generated The bigger story is what comes next. Lyten announced plans to transform the Skellefteå site into an industrial hub anchored by AI data centres. EdgeConneX, a major data centre developer, intends to acquire a site at the hub with the potential to scale to a 1 GW campus. The facility will draw on nearby hydroelectric power and integrate Lyten's battery storage into its infrastructure. Lyten expects to hire over 600 additional employees across Västerås and Skellefteå over the next 12 months. The company is also working to close its acquisition of Northvolt's German operations, funding the combined deals through equity investments and EdgeConneX's capital commitment to the data centre campus. Separately, Lyten's plans for a Reno, Nevada gigafactory have been shelved — the company is instead concentrating its manufacturing bets on the Swedish footprint. Why It Matters Northvolt's collapse was widely seen as a setback for European battery manufacturing independence. Lyten's acquisition, funded partly by data centre investment, shows how the AI boom is creating new pathways for battery companies that the EV market alone couldn't sustain. The deal also keeps the Skellefteå factory's 3,000+ jobs inside Europe rather than allowing the facility to sit idle. Form Energy and Xcel: 30 GWh of Iron-Air for Google In what is the largest single battery deployment ever announced, utility Xcel Energy will install 300 MW / 30 GWh of Form Energy's iron-air batteries at a Google data centre in Pine Island, Minnesota. Announced on February 24, 2026, the project is the world's largest grid-scale battery by energy capacity, capable of providing up to 100 hours of multi-day discharge. It is paired with 1,400 MW of wind power and 200 MW of solar under the same Xcel-Google agreement — a package designed to power the data centre and strengthen the Upper Midwest grid simultaneously. Iron-air batteries are designed for long-duration storage, typically 100 hours or more. They cannot compete with lithium-ion on power density or response time, but their raw materials (iron, water, air) are cheap and globally abundant. For a data centre that needs to guarantee uptime through multi-day grid outages or renewable energy droughts, iron-air offers something lithium-ion cannot: days of backup at a fraction of the cost per kilowatt-hour. Iron-air battery technology stores energy through the oxidation and reduction of iron. Image: AI-generated As of early March 2026, local officials in West Virginia — where Form Energy's Weirton factory is based — are celebrating the deal's progress, with reports confirming that construction preparations are advancing. The 30 GWh figure dwarfs virtually every previous grid-scale BESS project, which typically measure in the hundreds of megawatt-hours. Form Energy, founded in 2017, has been working toward commercial deployment for years. The company's first manufacturing facility in Weirton, West Virginia, began production in 2024. The Xcel/Google project would be its largest deployment by a wide margin and could establish iron-air as a credible technology category rather than a lab curiosity. Inlyte Energy Brings Iron-Sodium to Swiss Data Centres On the same day as the Lyten announcement, US startup Inlyte Energy and Swiss data centre operator NTS Colocation revealed a partnership to deploy 2 MW of iron-sodium battery capacity by 2028. While smaller in scale than the Form Energy project, this deal targets a different segment: commercial and industrial backup power for colocation facilities. Sodium-based battery chemistries are gaining traction for stationary storage applications. Image: AI-generated Inlyte's sodium metal chloride (SMC) technology has been around for over 40 years, but the company claims to have reinvented the cathode chemistry for low-cost grid and commercial storage. The pitch to data centres is specific: SMC batteries eliminate fire risk (a major concern for indoor installations), provide 24+ hours of backup, and handle daily load leveling. They can replace both lithium-ion UPS systems and diesel backup generators in a single unit. NTS Colocation will evaluate system performance and integration with existing electrical and control systems during a first phase running through 2026. If validation succeeds, wider deployment across NTS's portfolio could follow. The company has cited Switzerland's high grid fees, limited land availability, and strict permitting requirements as factors driving the search for alternatives to conventional diesel-plus-lithium setups. Inlyte recently completed a factory acceptance test at its facility near Derby, UK, producing modules exceeding 300 kWh each, which it claims are the largest SMC battery cells ever built. The company also received $4.1 million from the US Department of Energy for a long-duration storage project in a high wildfire risk zone. Why Data Centres Are Reshaping Battery Markets The convergence of batteries and data centres is not accidental. Global data centre power consumption is projected to exceed 1,000 TWh annually by 2030, roughly tripling from 2023 levels. Much of this growth comes from AI training and inference workloads that demand uninterrupted power. At the same time, utilities in many regions cannot guarantee the grid capacity that new data centres need. Battery storage solves several problems at once. It provides backup d