Tempo is making San Diego its new command center as it tries to kick fossil fuels out of heavy industry, announcing today that it will base its corporate headquarters in the city while it moves from pilots to full commercial rollout of its high-temperature thermochemical energy storage systems. The company is pitching the move as a way to scale production and customer deployments, but it is not yet saying when the HQ will open to the public or how many people it plans to hire.
In a press release via The Eagle-Tribune, Tempo called the San Diego headquarters “a critical step” in its transition to commercial scale. The brief announcement, attributed to Business Wire, casts the new HQ as the central hub for engineering, manufacturing development and customer deployment work. Tempo did not include a timeline for when the facility will be fully operational.
What the technology does
Tempo builds modular thermochemical energy storage, or TCES, units that bank electricity in magnesium-based metal-oxide materials, then release it as continuous, high-temperature air for industrial processes, according to Battery Tech Online. In company descriptions, the systems are designed to charge in roughly four hours and then discharge as steady process heat or as steam to drive turbines. The bigger ambition is to make electrified industrial heat pencil out against fossil fuels, without leaning on subsidies to close the gap.
Funding, demos and partnerships
Tempo has been inching toward commercialization with a mix of venture capital and public support. The company cites a Series A round and multiple awards from federal and state programs that back large-scale demonstrations, per Tempo. Those efforts include projects with UC San Diego and the Electric Power Research Institute that are meant to validate long-duration thermochemical storage at scale. Investors named in Tempo’s own disclosures include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Prelude Ventures.
Why San Diego
San Diego’s existing cleantech and advanced-materials scene, plus nearby university research and engineering talent, gives Tempo a built-in ecosystem for commercializing thermal battery tech. Earlier this year, the company rebranded from Redoxblox as it tried to move from lab validation to the market, a shift detailed in a company release reported by Business Wire. The company already lists a San Diego office and local contact information on its corporate site.
What comes next is where things get interesting: pilot installations, any permitting or build-out filings, and the first wave of commercial orders. Tempo describes the new headquarters as a platform to accelerate deployments. Local watchers will be combing through the usual breadcrumbs in the months ahead, looking for specific site plans and job postings to show how aggressively the company is really scaling in San Diego.
