SA国际传媒

Have you ever played Jenga? We bet you have. While you were stacking the small wooden blocks, did you see the future of energy storage hidden in the game? No?

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Switzerland-based seems to have, and the company鈥檚 innovative storage method made see enough potential profit to . (The company has raised other capital , including led by , subsidiary of . That deal will make sense shortly.)

For the Vision Fund, the deal size isn鈥檛 shocking; but what caught our eye is the technology selected. This is the fund鈥檚 first-ever investment into an energy company, according to a by Energy Vault.

Energy Vault is a change from Masayoshi Son and Company putting capital to work in on-demand companies, chips, or dog-walking, and we鈥檙e here for it.

Towering Possibilities

Here鈥檚 how the company鈥檚 Super Jenga (our name, not theirs) system works:

That is very smart? And simple? And pretty cool? And we suspect that it would look pretty neat in action. (TechCrunch of the system.)

Energy storage is an active sector, one that has as our needs to capture, and later access, power have risen; as the world moves towards renewable energy sources, some of which are more cyclical in nature than traditional power generation methods, being able to save generated power is a key piece of work.

To demonstrate the scale of the need for Energy Vault鈥檚 product, or one like it, read discussing how Utah may store air power in salt:

One hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, a giant mound of salt reaches thousands of feet down into the Earth. It鈥檚 thick, relatively pure and buried deep, making it one of the best resources of its kind in the American West.

Two companies want to tap the salt dome for compressed air energy storage, an old but rarely used technology that can store large amounts of power.

Compared to that, Energy Vault鈥檚 methods look downright simple. Let鈥檚 move on now to the Vision Fund and its recent deal flow and performance (both the good and bad), leaving you with the point that Energy Vault is incorrectly named. It should be called 鈥淓nergy Tower.鈥�

Vision Fund 2

Aside from investing in every late-stage company you can name, is looking to raise more money of its own. The SoftBank Vision Fund II plans to land somewhere around $108 billion, several billion dollars larger than its older sibling.

The pace and size of investments from 厂辞蹿迟叠补苍办鈥檚 first fund was hard to wrap our heads around — and, apparently, investors struggled as well. Reports in June detailed that the second Vision Fund was having a hard time raising cash to fuel its investing machine. However, a month later, SoftBank said it had landed and on its list of LPs for the second Vision Fund.

It was a welcome boost for SoftBank, as it raises new billions, that its first fund had a good recent quarter. The firm saw liquidity, as well as 鈥渦nrealized valuation gains鈥� that looked strong. The results weren鈥檛 too surprising, considering some of its portfolio companies鈥� recent successes (think direct listing, fundraising rush, and recent investing news), but they were notable all the same. And while we poke at 厂辞蹿迟叠补苍办鈥檚 invest-in-everything strategy, keep in mind its numbers showed specific strengths in its enterprise and consumer deals.

When SoftBank does launch its second, gigantic fund, we鈥檒l see a second wave of investments by the behemoth. Despite its string epic check size and deal stamina, the company does have a few investments that could serve as learning lessons for the second fund

Market Wobbles

First up, Uber, a huge Vision Fund investment that had a disappointing start to its life as a public company and still is struggling.

The most recent news from the ride-hailing giant comes from its recent second quarter earnings report. The global transportation company – which SoftBank put billions into, making it – had less revenue than expected and larger losses than anticipated.

Uber must be feeling deflated, to say the least.

SoftBank, in its earnings report, explained that it had an 鈥渦nrealized loss totaling 楼195,326 million was recorded for the decrease in the fair values of investments in Uber and others.鈥� That means Uber isn鈥檛 the only Vision Fund deal that appears weak.

Looking to the future, WeWork, which filed its S-1 publicly yesterday, appears dangerously unprofitable as well (more here). And SoftBank has invested at least $6 billion into the co-working space business over time, and at one point .

But while its Uber bet hasn鈥檛 performed well thus far, and the company鈥檚 WeWork stake is looking risky, the Vision Fund鈥檚 huge (paper) win from its DoorDash bet could allow the investing giant to keep making big bets on unprofitable companies. And, perhaps, cut checks into different sorts of corporate growth risk, deals like this week鈥檚 Energy Vault deal.

Energy Jenga!

Illustration: .