A decade ago, large-scale battery storage was considered the mythical Holy Grail to solving renewable energy’s intermittency woes with sunshine and wind. The early pilot projects remained in their infancy—too expensive to rapidly ramp up.
Today, technology advances and dramatic cost decreases combine to set up battery energy storage as the savior for both renewables and the overarching electric grid as power demand soars and Congress rapidly phases out tax credits for wind and solar energy.
The modern electric grid wastes a tremendous amount of power generation when demand isn’t peaking, and battery systems—whose tax credits were largely spared in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill—are now here to store that excess power and deploy the electricity as needed when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t gusting or natural gas and coal plants are disrupted, enhancing both grid efficiency and stability. Close to half of all battery storage projects are paired with solar or wind energy projects as part of their symbiotic relationship.
“Without batteries it would be mayhem,” said Izzet Bensusan, founder and CEO of the Captona energy transition investment firm. “The utilities are realizing that without batteries they cannot manage the grid.
“If you don’t have batteries, there’s a chance you may not get power in your home,” Bensusan told Fortune, arguing that the world needs more power—much of which can only come online quickly enough from renewables—and batteries are increasingly necessary for stability.
After record growth in 2024, U.S. battery energy storage systems (BESS) could grow from more than 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity—enough to power 20 million homes—to anywhere from 120 GW to 150 GW by the end of 2030, depending on the range of projections. The Department of Energy estimates that nearly 19 GW will come online just in 2025 after 10.4 GW were added last year—second in the world after China—although tariff uncertainty may cause a temporary slowdown this year. California and Texas easily lead the way in battery deployment with massive grids and ample land, but the rest of the country is beginning to catch up.
Lithium-ion battery costs have plunged 75% in a decade and the next generation of battery chemistries—sodium-ion, lithium-sulfur, lithium iron phosphate (LFP), and others—are more easily sourced in the U.S. and potentially better aligned with the grid than lithium-ion units initially designed for moving electric vehicles. And battery manufacturers now see grid demand overtaking slumping EV needs in the U.S.
“We’re right at the beginning of the supercycle of investment,” said Cameron Dales, cofounder and president of Peak Energy, which is developing battery storage systems from commonly sourced sodium in the U.S. Dales contends that more than $1 trillion will be spent on BESS growth worldwide over the next 10 years. “We need to get going and build out the capacity. You started to see that over the last two years with the massive growth, but I think we’re at the beginning.”
Painful and beautiful
While the new GOP spending law targets wind and solar power as part of a partisan crusade against renewables, cutting tax credits off after 2027—projects must begin construction by July 2026 or be placed in service by the end of 2027—the key tax credits for large-scale batteries stay in place until 2033 after beginning to phase down in 2030.
One catch is more parts must be manufactured in the U.S.—and less from China, a “foreign entity of concern”—but supply chains are evolving for financial and security needs.
“Energy storage is important whether you’re on the blue side or the red side. Everybody agrees this is critical for the country,” Dales told Fortune.
“We don’t outsource F-16 (fighter jet) manufacturing to another country, and so I think it’s a similar dynamic in batteries,” Dales said. “You need to control the building blocks for how you generate and ultimately store electricity.”
Of note, the U.S. Department of Defense is contracting more with domestic battery manufacturing to power military drones.
Peak has a California manufacturing plant for sodium-ion batteries that utilize abundant U.S. materials without any of China’s dominance of critical minerals. The systems require less cooling so they can operate in harsher temperatures.
After a couple of decades during which U.S. power demand has remained relatively stagnant, domestic electricity consumption is expected to spike by 25% from 2023 to 2035 and roughly 60% from 2023 to 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. A big part of that increase comes from the hyperscalers: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are investing anywhere from $75 billion to $100 billion each into building data centers for 2025 alone.
The combination of much more demand plus the loss of tax credits is expected to result in more spikes in commercial and residential electricity costs. But incentivized battery storage can at least help mitigate costs.
After all, supply chains for gas-fired turbines for power plants are sold out for the next few years, and new nuclear power is almost a decade out. So, renewables and batteries will represent most of the new power generation for the rest of this decade—regardless of cost.
“I’m going build solar at all costs, and I’m going to charge for it, and people are going to have to pay for it,” Bensusan said. “It can come on online in six to nine months. We don’t really have a choice.”
Evolving dynamics
The new dynamic added to the mix is the improved tax credit environment for battery systems relative to wind and solar, which could change how projects are prioritized.
Of late, more battery systems were co-located with solar farms. Now, more developers might build battery systems and pair them with ancillary solar power instead, said Ravi Manghani, senior director of strategic sourcing for Anza Renewables, which develops software platforms for solar and BESS.
“We might be entering a paradigm where energy storage would actually drive solar growth,” Manghani said. “Up until now, solar was driving the energy storage option. That switch may have flipped because of the way the tax credits phase out.”
While wind power pairs well with battery systems, the highs and lows of gusty weather patterns are harder to predict than the sun and the daily rotation of the Earth. That’s why most new solar farms are paired with battery storage.
While most rechargeable battery systems are designed to hold four or six hours of electricity, they can be built to hold 10 hours or more—it’s just costly. But even four hours of electricity deployed when people come home from work and energy usage spikes in the early evening is extremely beneficial for the grid.
“It’s like getting a washer without a dryer. These things really reinforce each other,” said Aurora Solar cofounder and CEO Chris Hopper about the natural pairing of solar and batteries.
Still, while many solar and wind projects will sget built with or without tax credits, at least 20% fewer will become reality than anticipated, according to projections. Those losses could still impact battery deployment.
And, while costs continue to fall and domestic manufacturing for batteries ramps up, much more progress is still needed—and faster.
Silicon Valley’s Lyten is betting on building BESS using lithium-sulfur batteries with materials from the U.S. and Europe—negating any needs for nickel, manganese, cobalt, and graphite, which are all critical minerals dominated by China.
“To really get to that next jump that we call mass-market energy storage where you can deploy these very economically everywhere around the world, you need another step change down in battery costs,” said Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief sustainability officer. “Our bet on lithium sulfur is that, in the long term, the lowest cost materials are going to win.”
Already focusing on battery-cell manufacturing in California and a planned lithium-sulfur “gigafactory” in Nevada, in July, Lyten just acquired Europe’s largest BESS manufacturing operation in Poland from Northvolt. Lyten also aims to add more BESS manufacturing in the U.S., Norman said.
“We do believe renewables are going to keep going forward, and almost all of that is going to be paired with batteries. What we’re seeing is just an insatiable demand for more power,” Norman said.
“In a world where the tax credits are going to be harder to come by you really need to juice the economics as much as possible for renewables. That really leads you to needing energy storage so you can get every electron that asset produces turned into value.”
To build Airbnb into a billion-dollar business, Brian Chesky sometimes worked gruesome 100-hour weeks. However, on top of that, he would regularly carve out time to pick the brains of one of the most important people in the world: former President Barack Obama.
“At one point in 2018, we had a standing one-hour call every week, and I basically had my day job during the day, and then I had my night school with the former president, where I would get these assignments, but it changed my life,” Chesky has just revealed.
Speaking on Michelle Obama’s podcast IMO, he added: “I just was really shameless about reaching out to him, asking for advice, asking for mentorship, and he would meet with me, and he’d give me advice.”
He recalled the 44th president of the United States advised him to avoid becoming like other leaders who are effectively “self-driving cars” without intention. Instead, he should always be thinking long and hard about relationships—with his friends, his success, and his company—and be more active with the impact he wants to make.
Fortune reached out to Chesky and former President Obama for comment.
“The thing about being very successful in tech and making a lot of money and all this is no one ever told me how lonely it would become,” Chesky said to Michelle and Robinson. “And I started realizing, well, it’s weird, I had old friends that were middle-class, and I’ll be honest, a lot of them seemed happier than me at that point in my life.”
And he credits former President Obama with helping him realize that how he was feeling was completely normal: that “the more success you get, the more isolated you get.”
“People dream of success, but what they don’t realize is a lot of with success comes disconnection to your past, to yourself, to your friends, and I think a lot of what I’ve tried to do the last handful of years is to reconnect, to not live a life of isolation,” Chesky said.
Obama’s wisdom to Chesky was simple: He needed to be more hands-on with his relationships. That means instead of texting or calling a close friend once a year, stay constantly connected with them. Chesky said it’s a lesson he translated into his work as the leader of Airbnb.
“He told me something that I’ll never forget,” Chesky said. “He said you should institutionalize your intentions, so that even when you’re a public company, you can make sure not to compromise your vision. And what he meant by that, I think, was that you should be more thoughtful about what you’re making, why you’re making it, and the impact of what you’re making is on people.”
Chesky admitted Obama’s advice has made a “really, really big difference” at Airbnb. And while it may sound odd for a former President to effectively give a CEO homework, it’s something nothing new for Obama, who spent over a decade in the classroom teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago before his jump into the political arena.
The ‘life hack’ to find success: Reach out to an old friend
The lessons learned from Chesky and President Obama’s relationship on finding success can be summarized into two simple steps: Seek out mentors and have friends outside of social media.
“For young people, the number one thing they need to learn how to do is how to learn,” Chesky said. “And some of the best ways to learn are from other people, and some of the best ways to learn from people are, again, in the real world.”
Moreover, rekindling old relationships is among what Chesky calls a “simple life hack” to make life happy.
“I think the vast majority of people, if they reach out to someone, someone will want to help them,” he added. “They reach out to an old friend, the old friend will want to reach back out to them, and that is the path for reconnection. It’s a path for relationships, and it’s a path for purpose.”
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on May 27, 2025.
More on career advice:
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The value of a Birkin bag skyrockets from the moment it leaves the Hermès store.
That’s partly because not just any regular person can buy the bag. Only customers with a sizable purchase history at the brand are offered the opportunity to buy a “quota bag,” such as a Birkin or a Kelly.
But even Hermès’ most loyal shoppers don’t get to choose the exact Birkin model they want. The brand allows boutiques to purchase a select number of Birkins per season, and the style of the bags is rarely known ahead of time, according to Sotheby’s. The notoriously opaque process, nicknamed the Hermès Game, has only generated more desire for the bag—and even became the subject of a class-action lawsuit.
Looking to sidestep the Hermès Game and score the bag their heart desires, handbag enthusiasts shell out tens of thousands of dollars on the resale market. Thanks to its exclusivity and its status as an investment piece, a Birkin bag’s value is much higher than its sticker price of around $12,000.
“The resale value of particularly the Birkin and Kelly bags over the past 10 years has outpaced gold,” James Firestein, founder of luxury resale and authentication platform OpenLuxury, told Fortune.
Prior to starting his own company in 2022, Firestein spent a decade as a luxury authenticator, including two years as the director of authentication at Rebag. Over the course of his career, Firestein has seen a “perfect storm” of factors “bolster this wild ride upward.”
“I know several instances where people have doubled their money based on buying it 10 years ago, and reselling it today in pristine condition,” he said.
‘Like buying a Picasso’
For some buyers, a Birkin bag isn’t a high-end piece of arm candy, but a worthy investment. Of the Birkin owners he has worked with, Firestein estimates 75% actually use the bags, while the remaining 25% keep them in storage as investments.
“It’s similar to buying a Piccaso and holding it in your home, because you can look at it, you can enjoy it,” Firestein said. “But then you ship it off in a couple of years and trade it for something else.”
The value of an Hermès bag can increase dramatically over time, Firestein said, depending on its color, material, and condition. Secondhand demand is so high partly because the resale market offers shoppers more options than the Hermès store, where customers are allowed one quota bag per year, and rarely get to choose the exact model they want.
Firestein said the steepest price increase he has seen was a Black Togo 30 Birkin that doubled in value in five years. But price increases can be driven by trend cycles and changing demand—so it can be a “gamble,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say jump in with both feet at this point,” he said. “But if you got it in 2012, and you sold in 2019, that’s different.”
The Birkin legend
Before its handbags were spotted on the arms of Jane Birkin and Cardi B, Paris-based Hermès began in 1837 as a maker of horse harnesses. Over the course of six generations, it became a ready-to-wear and leather-goods powerhouse renowned for its craftsmanship.
As for the iconic Birkin bag, here’s how the legend goes: In 1984, the late actress Jane Birkin was seated next to Jean-Louis Dumas, executive chairman of Hermès at the time, on a flight from Paris to London. Birkin said she couldn’t find a bag that suited her needs as a young mother—so she sketched her dream design on a sick bag, according to CNN. Dumas infused the bag with equestrian elements, giving it the signature Hermès look.
“It was more of a subtle old-money brand,” Firestein said of Hermès’ status prior to the Birkin craze.
The Birkin slowly reached “it bag” status thanks to being spotted on the arm of many celebrities in the 1990s and 2000s—and on Sex and the City. But it wasn’t until the 2010s, when the online resale market reached the masses, that the hype went stratospheric.
Firestein credits e-commerce with enabling shoppers to buy a secondhand Hermès bag from any part of the world. Meanwhile, online forums allowed people to share the secrets of the Hermès Game once exclusive to the 1%. The Birkin became a collector’s item over time—and underground demand continues to fuel the resale market.
What’s in the bag?
Some people may desire Birkin bags because they’re so hard to get—but fans also celebrate the brand’s artisan manufacturing and 200-year legacy of craftsmanship.
Unlike brands owned by LVMH and Kering, which often share factories, Hermès only uses its own factories, says Firestein. Conglomerate-owned brands like Balenciaga, Gucci, and Saint Laurent also tend to use more mass-market materials that are cheaper and easier to get, Firestein explains.
“Their leather factories are only Hermès affiliates, and they only create Hermès leathers,” he said. “So you’re buying into part of that heritage, but then you’re also buying into a higher-quality material that they’ve been using for many, many years.”
Compared to other brands, Hermès’ quality is “top-tier,” Firestein said. And though he works with 43 different luxury brands, he admits to having an affinity for Hermès bags.
“They’re made to last for generations,” Firestein said. “And they’re just beautiful luxury objects at the end of the day—almost like sculptures.”
A version of this story published on Fortune.com on March 27, 2024.
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Good morning. CEOs and CFOs are clearly focused on AI—it is the most-used term in S&P 500 earnings calls this year.
FactSet examined conference call transcripts for all S&P 500 companies that held earnings calls from September 15 through December 4 and found that the term “AI” was cited on 306 calls. This is the highest number of S&P 500 earnings calls on which “AI” has been cited over the past 10 years; the previous record was 292 in Q2 2025, according to John Butters, VP and senior earnings analyst at FactSet. In addition, the 306 figure is significantly above the five-year average of 136 and the 10-year average of 86.
At the sector level, information technology (95%) and communication services (95%) sectors have the highest percentages of earnings calls citing “AI” for Q3.
In addition, S&P 500 companies that cited “AI” on their Q3 earnings calls have seen a higher average price increase than those that did not—since Dec. 31, 2024 (13.9% vs. 5.7%), June 30, 2025 (8.1% vs. 3.9%), and Sept. 30, 2025 (1.0% vs. 0.3%).
Navigating uncertainty
Besides AI, another term I was curious about is “uncertainty,” so I asked Butters for his take. He analyzed S&P 500 earnings calls (per quarter) in which the term “uncertainty” was cited at least once, going back to 2020. He found that, similar to the pattern seen with “tariff” citations, mentions of “uncertainty” spiked in Q1 2025 but declined significantly over the following two quarters. In Q1 2025, there were 415 mentions of “uncertainty,” compared to 282 in Q2 and 201 in Q3.
Following President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” earlier this year, significant uncertainty emerged around the new administration’s economic and geopolitical agenda, Yuval Atsmon, CFO at McKinsey, recently told me. Atsmon explained that at the peak of uncertainty, his focus as a CFO was on identifying actions that would be helpful in any scenario. “The worst thing is inaction,” he added. Acting on what you can control builds resilience, he said.
Operating in uncertainty has seemingly become a constant, which may help explain why explicit mentions of the term have tapered off during earnings calls. While uncertainty often drives defensive moves, Atsmon emphasized the importance of revisiting long-standing strategies and seizing competitive opportunities.
Global AI spending is expected to climb in 2026, and it is likely that “AI” will remain a top term in Q4 earnings calls in January as companies discuss investment, margins, capex, and productivity.
Neil Berkley was promoted to CFO of Alector, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALEC), a clinical-stage biotechnology company. Berkley has served as Alector’s chief business officer (CBO) since March 2024, and CBO and interim CFO since June 2025. He is a biotech executive with more than two decades of experience leading corporate strategy, finance, business development, and operations across both early- and late-stage companies.
Caleb Noel was promoted to EVP and CFO of NFP, an Aon company, a property and casualty broker and benefits consultant. Noel has served in various corporate finance and operational roles during his 23-year career with NFP, most recently as SVP of finance and operations. He previously served as VP of finance for Scottish Holdings, a division of Scottish Re, and as an analyst in the investment banking division of Prudential Securities (now Wells Fargo & Company).
Big Deal
CFOs have a long-term focus when it comes to AI, according to research by RGP, a global professional services firm. The report, “The AI Foundational Divide: From Ambition to Readiness,” describes a finance landscape that is racing toward an AI-powered future yet constrained by issues such as fragile data foundations.
Although 66% of CFOs surveyed expect significant AI ROI within two years, only 14% report meaningful value today. However, optimism persists despite key obstacles to AI ROI, including deep structural barriers such as data trust issues (only 10% fully trust enterprise data), technical debt (86% say legacy systems limit AI readiness), and skills shortages that threaten to slow adoption.
The findings are based on insights from 200 U.S. CFOs at enterprises with more than $10 billion in annual revenue. Sectors include technology, health care, financial services, and CPG/retail.
Going deeper
A new episode of “This Week in Business,” a Wharton podcast, focuses on AI and technological evolution. Lynn Wu, a Wharton associate professor of operations, information and decisions, addresses the rise of transformative technologies and the cycles of tech bubbles throughout history. Wu discusses where AI fits within these cycles, describing it as a necessary phase of technological evolution that lays the groundwork for transformative advancements across industries.
Overheard
“In the end, consumers will win if courts and enforcers act based on evidence.”
—Satya Marar, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, writes in a Fortune opinion piece titled “Netflix, Warner, Paramount and antitrust: Entertainment megadeal’s outcome must follow the evidence, not politics or fear of integration.” Marar specializes in competition, innovation, and governance, and is an AI and antitrust fellow at the Innovators Network.
Politics8 years ago