Big batteries that store power from the sun and wind are complicated machines unto themselves. They generate a flood of data, including thousands of measurements every second about temperature, voltage, and performance. While that much is standard, the problem arises in that different pieces of equipment and different companies all “speak” slightly different versions of the same language. The result is confusion, extra work, and higher costs.
Wake Forest’s Phaseshift (a 2026 GrepBeat Startups to Watch honoree) wants to fix that.
Co-founder and CEO Brandon “Shocky” Zschokke calls the company “a data and agentic operations layer for industrial assets.” In plain English: Phaseshift connects to the equipment at energy sites, cleans up and organizes the data so it’s consistent, and then makes that information easy for people, software, and AI to use. The startup began with large battery systems and is now expanding into other critical infrastructure.
“We connect to all the different equipment at a site, normalize that data into a common layer, and make it usable by people, applications and AI agents,” Zschokke said.
How Brandon and Anirudh got here
Zschokke and Co-Founder Anirudh Mulukutla both came from FlexGen, a Durham company that builds battery energy storage systems. Zschokke joined when the company was still small (he was, roughly, employee number 13). He later worked on the practical side of keeping those big battery systems running after they went live: monitoring them, fixing problems and reporting how they were performing.
Zschokke then became chief technology officer at another company called Clean Energy Services, or CES (later bought by FlexGen), where he helped build a remote operations center. Solar farms, wind turbines, and batteries all produce data, but each one does it a little differently. Trying to monitor everything at once, he said, was like trying to understand people who speak the same language but with completely different accents and slang.
“It’s like me telling somebody, ‘Hey, speak English.’ Like, maybe they can, maybe they can’t. Maybe it’s a different dialect,” Zschokke explained.
Phaseshift was created to make everything consistent so monitoring and maintenance can happen without requiring a huge team.
Why this matters
Right now, many energy sites end up with several different companies each plugging in their own computers and building their own connections just to get the data they need. That means repeated work, higher costs and more stress for the site owner.
Phaseshift offers one clean, reliable connection. Customers plug in once and then everyone who needs the information—owners, maintenance teams, equipment makers, power buyers, and so on—can get what they need without having to establish their own connections or start from scratch every time.
Two particularly big problems the startup is solving revolve around scattered data and high costs. According to Zschokke, a lot of systems keep information locked away or are hard to combine with other tools. That, on top of the sheer volume of data from batteries, can make traditional cloud solutions very expensive.
Phaseshift uses a smarter mix of on-site and cloud processing to keep costs under control while still meeting strict security rules.
How the business works
Customers pay a one-time setup fee for the hardware and initial connection, then a monthly subscription for the ongoing service. Pricing is kept simple, usually based on the size of the energy site rather than complicated data formulas.
The startup has been funded by its own customers to date, starting with consulting work that helped build the platform. It recently received a $50K NC IDEA Seed grant as well. The team is currently comprised of six people, with Mulukutla leading the technical side as CTO.
Zschokke sees a natural next step in data centers. Many of these emerging facilities are looking for ways to generate or manage their own power. Phaseshift’s technology can help connect the power side with the computing side so operators understand exactly what’s happening.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Phaseshift
Co-Founders: Brandon Zschokke (CEO), Anirudh Mulukutla (CTO)
Founded: 2025
Team size: 6
Location: Wake Forest
Website: phaseshiftdata.com
Funding: Closed SAFE round, raising pre-seed
Zschokke’s approach to building a company is simple: Focus on the customer. He learned that early while selling motorcycles in college and had the simple mantra reinforced later on, working as a sales engineer. Cool technology only matters if it solves a real problem. For Phaseshift, that problem is helping energy sites grow without having to hire more and more people to manage the data and operations.
He also encourages college students interested in startups to jump into any entrepreneurship programs or clubs their schools may offer. As he put it, those experiences push you out of your comfort zone in the best way.
Phaseshift is already running on multiple battery energy storage sites and continues building the quiet but essential foundation that lets clean energy—and the people who run it—work smarter.
