Petra Power Sets 2028 Rollout for Fuel Cells Powering Data Centers

Petra Power is targeting 2028 for the first deployments of its solid oxide fuel cells with data center and defense customers, founder Aaron Goodman told TechCrunch in an interview published Oct. 10, 2026. Full-scale production is slated for 2029, according to Goodman.

What does Petra Power sell?

Petra, founded in 2017, builds solid oxide fuel cells — ceramic devices that convert fuel such as natural gas into electricity without burning it, Goodman said. The company markets the units as a lower-emission, lower-cost alternative to traditional generators for powering data centers and large vehicles, and says the hardware has a smaller physical footprint because the cells are compact and lightweight.

How is a fuel cell different from a generator?

Goodman described conventional power generation as a multi-step process with heavy energy loss at each stage. "Combustion takes fuel and creates explosions," he said. "Those explosions create heat. That heat creates motion. The motion powers an electromotive force, which eventually creates electricity. It's a lot of steps, and they all have so much loss in them that you end up with a really inefficient system."

Fuel cells skip most of those steps, according to Goodman. "What fuel cells do is they take the electrons directly off of the fuel, so they strip the fuel of its electrons, which creates electricity," he said. "It's one step, no loss, and subsequently, in theory, at least, they're much, much more efficient." That efficiency, he said, translates into lower fuel costs for customers.

Who is Petra Power's target customer right now?

Goodman said Petra is working with neoclouds and infrastructure providers a tier below the largest hyperscale cloud operators, though he declined to name specific agreements. Hyperscalers remain the company's long-term goal. "Hyperscalers are an ICP [ideal customer profile] for us, and we talk a lot to them, but we don't have anything firm with them yet," Goodman said. "We're still kind of working in that direction. Obviously, they're the largest consumers of power. They're the ones that we can make the biggest impact with, so that's where we'd like to go."

What is the Defense Department angle?

Petra's second customer category is the U.S. government. The company envisions its fuel cells supplying auxiliary power to land vehicles — electricity for onboard equipment when the main engine is off — though Goodman indicated that side of the business is also still in development, without disclosing contract specifics.

When will the technology actually ship?

Goodman set 2028 as the target year for first deployments with data center and defense customers, with 2029 penciled in for full-scale production, according to the TechCrunch interview. Those timelines remain internal targets rather than signed delivery dates, and Petra has not announced binding agreements with hyperscale cloud providers or defense agencies.

The push comes as AI workloads drive sharp increases in electricity demand, intensifying competition among power technologies — from grid upgrades to on-site generation — for a share of data center and military energy budgets.