Deniss Katsoka and Mattia Agosta met while working at AWS, but it was the AI boom's hunger for energy that pushed them to start Baselayer Energy. Their thesis is that the world is full of underpriced, fragmented pockets of energy, locked behind infrastructure, geography, or geopolitics, and whoever controls them will hold real leverage in the years ahead. Baselayer Energy was built to scout out stranded energy and convert it into ultra-lean compute infrastructure, starting with Bitcoin mining for fast cash flow, and built from day one to pivot toward AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads as that demand grows.
Their first raise was meant to be small: $50K for operational liquidity to get their first machines running. They closed it at $100K, doubling the target, with Roundtable's Luxembourg SPV structure smoothing the process for their predominantly European investor base. A streamlined KYC process and centralized investor communication helped close the round in under a month, enabling them to build a reliable proof of concept. Baselayer Energy is now gearing up for a far bigger round that will enable them to pursue more ambitious goals on the path toward enterprise-grade resilience.
Key takeaways:
- Baselayer Energy's mission is to scout the world for abundant, underpriced energy and build ultra-lean compute data centers around it, starting with Bitcoin mining as a fast, capital-efficient first monetization layer before expanding into AI and HPC compute.
- The company closed its first round on Roundtable in about a month, raising $100K from 15 to 20 European friends-and-family investors, doubling its original target.
- Roundtable's Luxembourg SPV structure let the team raise from European friends and family, while a centralized platform kept KYC and contract management simple for both founders and investors.
- When a post-raise contract amendment needed sign-off from all investors, Roundtable's centralized voting got unanimous approval in under 24 hours, avoiding the need to chase 15 to 20 signatures individually.
Roundtable: To start, could you tell us a bit about your background and how Baselayer Energy came about?
Deniss Katsoka: Mattia and I come from the world of Big Tech; in fact, we met at AWS. We saw how big data centers are run from a commercial perspective, but we were pretty detached from the aspect of physical infrastructure. Then last year, with the AI boom, it became clear the world needs more and more energy, and we started forming the thesis that whoever controls abundant energy will have a competitive advantage, especially in the coming years and decades.
At the same time, we noticed a lot of energy is fragmented and has high barriers to entry around the world: infrastructure barriers, remote locations, geopolitical barriers. That creates pockets of underpriced energy. So we started the company as scouts for abundant, underpriced energy, with the thesis that whoever controls those energy rights can decide how to monetize them: find an off-taker, sell back to the grid, or find an end user. Given our background in data centers and compute, compute was the obvious first monetization layer.
So, in short, we scout for abundant, underpriced energy, and build ultra-lean compute data centers around it. That's also how we brought in our CTO, Saqib Alam, who's been in the industry for over 12 years.
Mattia Agosta: We come from tech and software sales, but we believe the future is hardware. Data centers sit right at that intersection: they combine real-world physical assets like power, electricity, and water with the compute layer on top, which is the side we know best.
Roundtable: When was the company founded, and what's the build-out been like?
Deniss Katsoka: The idea was conceptualized last summer, and we officially incorporated in October 2025. We got our CTO on board in November, and deployed our first machines in the US in December, which were bootstrapped. In late January and early February, we started preparing for our first round.
Building data centers is a very capital-intensive business: it's not the traditional VC model where you raise money, build an MVP, test it, and hope for a home run. We're not trying to be the next Google. But the upside is that we follow a well-defined playbook: as long as you have land, power, water access, and machines, you can start producing cash flow within one or two months of going live. Bitcoin mining is the first workflow we pursued specifically because it doesn't require end clients, unlike most SaaS or tech startups, which can take a year or more to reach the market.
Roundtable: Let's talk about that first fundraising round. What was the plan, and how did it go?
Deniss Katsoka: The initial goal was just $50,000 for operational liquidity and the deployment of those first machines to validate our thesis that we could monetize underpriced energy through compute. We didn't know if that was too little or just right. Coincidentally, that's around when Roundtable reached out to us.
We went fully live with the round in early March and concluded in early April, essentially doubling the initial amount and raising $100,000. That was enough at the time to prioritize speed and deploy extra machines.
Roundtable: And now you're raising again, correct?
Deniss Katsoka: Yes, because the business is capital intensive, the time between rounds is short. Once machines are up and running and you've proven yourself, you move to the next one. We closed that first round in mid-April, and a couple of weeks ago, in late May, we kicked off the subsequent seed round, which is already more industrial-level: multi-megawatt, multi-million-dollar.
We're raising very conservatively at $1 million right now, but the real objective is $150 million within the next 12 months; that's our medium-term target. To put the milestones in context: everything up to now, with the pre-seed money, has been proof of concept and small pilot operations.
This seed round gets us to one megawatt minimum, which is approximately $1 million. $150 million would unlock about 100 megawatts, which puts us in a different league. Five to ten years down the road, the plan is to control two to three megawatts of our own energy production. We're specifically interested in nuclear power.
Mattia Agosta: Right now we haven't finalized the legal or processing structure for this round yet. That's something we're still working through.
Roundtable: That's very exciting. Going back to the first round, could you tell me more about how you found out about Roundtable? What were your first impressions?
Deniss Katsoka: Someone from the team reached out to me directly on LinkedIn and asked if we were familiar with SPVs, since we were structuring our raise that way. I said "Sure, let's talk", and honestly, it was a great sales call. You made the case for Roundtable, and since we didn't really have many alternatives in mind, we decided to give it a shot. I brought it to Mattia, we got on a call together, and what caught our attention was the value proposition: Roundtable will maintain and run the SPV over the coming years, including yearly accounting, meaning that we wouldn't have to spend our own time on legal and admin work.
There was also an external factor: our investors are friends and family, and while we're an American-incorporated company, they're all based in Europe. So going through a Luxembourg SPV was particularly compelling for tax transparency. Combined with the interface, where investors could sign up, complete their KYC, and invest all in one place, the choice was obvious. This enabled us to close the first round, doubling our initial target, in about three weeks.
Roundtable: Can you tell me more about your overall experience with the platform, for you and for your investors?
Mattia Agosta: I'd been an angel investor myself in other startups, and I'd never used a platform like Roundtable; usually, everything was manual. I'd sign up, make a bank transfer, and send documents. In one case, a signed document literally got lost. So for us, having a single platform that managed both the SPV and investor relationships was very attractive. Everything was streamlined: once an investor committed to a certain amount, everything was handled by Roundtable, from the signature of the contract to the bank transfer.
Deniss Katsoka: In fact, that's feedback we got directly from our investors. Even though they're close friends, they're still investing real money, and having Roundtable in the picture gave them extra peace of mind: they could look up our track record, and it wasn't just going straight into our personal accounts.
Mattia Agosta: Yes, feedback was positive across the board. A couple of investors had already used Roundtable before, so they were familiar with it. For new investors, the process was easy too: they found even the KYC step very straightforward, and that's usually the most painful part. We had 15 to 20 investors and never had to help a single one get through the process.
Deniss Katsoka: I'll add one more example. After we'd raised the money, we needed to update the actual contract the investors had signed, which required getting all of them to vote on the changes. Because everything was centralized in one place, in less than 24 hours every investor had voted and we could clear that blocker. If it had been manual, we'd probably have been chasing 15 to 20 people on WhatsApp.
Roundtable: How about the user interface?
Mattia Agosta: The platform overall felt very intuitive. We liked being able to add all our company information so investors could see our deck and descriptions directly. And watching the real-time voting status when we needed sign-off was great; we could see exactly who still needed to be chased. On top of that, the team was very responsive throughout the whole journey, on both the software side and the relationship side.
Roundtable: Were there any pressure points where that responsiveness really made a difference?
Deniss Katsoka: In the final week, we were running up against our internal deadline, and there were admin blockers, like investors asking to change specific contract terms, so we needed to get back to your team for those updates. Thankfully, everyone was super responsive and quick.
We couldn't afford to miss our internal deadline, or have our friends-and-family investors hit an admin wall, because that would be embarrassing for us. The good news is that neither of those things happened: Roundtable helped mitigate exactly those risks, which was the biggest value for us.
Roundtable: Had you considered other platforms before choosing Roundtable?
Deniss Katsoka: Not this time, but a couple of years ago, I had looked into SPV structures elsewhere, including a well-known European competitor. I got on a call and the person couldn't articulate the value clearly, or explain the process in a straightforward way; it just felt messy and overwhelming. So my conclusion at the time was that it wasn't worth pursuing.
The first call with your team, by contrast, was much more straightforward: warm and welcoming on a human level, with clear benefits and clear next steps laid out. Same basic SPV structure, but night and day in terms of experience. That's what made me tell Mattia it was worth looking into.
Mattia Agosta: Exactly. It all came down to the people, and their capacity to respond quickly and resolve issues. This was extremely valuable to us.
Roundtable: What are the main operational advantages to using Roundtable to structure an SPV?
Mattia Agosta: In my opinion, automating operations and outsourcing the management of the SPV.
Deniss Katsoka: Agreed. We haven't gone through a full liquidity event yet, so we can't speak to that part of the experience, but in theory it seems compelling. When you're running a business, you want to spend your time talking to customers and investors, not worrying about reporting or admin. That's where having Roundtable as the expert on reporting and management is the biggest advantage.
Roundtable: Will you use Roundtable for this next round?
Deniss Katsoka: We will definitely consider Roundtable and have no reason not to. Over the next couple of weeks we'll be deciding on jurisdiction, whether we need a separate entity, the total raise amount, valuation, and how many investors we want. All of those questions point us back to Roundtable, and from there we'll make a final decision.
Roundtable: Last question, any lessons learned about fundraising you'd pass on to other founders?
Mattia Agosta: I'd say it comes down to having a strong value proposition, but also finding the right investors. We had a lot of conversations early on, but eventually identified the right profile: people who were comfortable taking risks and believed in ambitious projects. The investors who back us aren't the same people who'd back an early-stage software company; it's a different business model with a different return profile.
Deniss Katsoka: My advice would be to not disregard or skip the friends-and-family round. What we raised initially was never going to get us to megawatt-scale on its own, so we were hesitant to go with it; we nearly skipped it in favor of going straight to a bigger raise. But finally, we're glad we had this initial round.
If you ask a stranger for a million dollars and your own friends haven't backed you, that's a hard sell. So yes, it costs you a couple of extra months, but it builds real credibility, gives you an operational buffer, and lets you learn the fundraising process in a safe, smaller-scale environment before going into bigger rounds with bigger investors.
Mattia Agosta: I fully agree. We underestimated that round going in, but the credibility and learnings we got from it were absolutely worth it.
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