Seattle-based LevelTen Energy, a startup facilitating the deployment of clean energy projects, is laying off 60 workers according to a new Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) released by the Washington state Employment Security Department.
The layoffs take effect beginning Aug. 15, according to the filing.
“LevelTen Energy has made strategic workforce changes to align with the economic impacts of the recent federal budget legislation, tariff uncertainty, and ongoing permitting challenges. By streamlining our structure and adopting the latest technology tools, we’re maintaining our strong financial footing,” LevelTen CEO and founder Bryce Smith said by email on Monday.
The company describes itself as the world’s largest online marketplace connecting buyers, sellers, advisors and financiers of clean energy projects. Its customers include tech companies and other businesses and institutions looking to support renewable power in order to curb their climate emissions. LevelTen’s platform has been used for transactions totaling more than $14.8 billion.
“Customers rely on LevelTen’s data and marketplaces, especially in times of great volatility,” Smith added. “We’ll continue to build the products that they trust, and create new innovations that drive the clean energy transition. We have weathered ever-changing markets since 2016, and we’re fully prepared to achieve our current and long-term commercial and environmental priorities.
Clean energy deployments have been on the rise for many years, but Republican leaders in July passed their mega bill, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill, which cuts tax incentives for renewable wind and solar power passed during the Biden administration. Those breaks are scuttled in 2028, at which point new installations of onshore wind and solar in the U.S. are expected to plunge 41%, according to BloombergNEF.
The headwinds come just a year after LevelTen raised a $65 million Series D round that included investments from Microsoft and Google, among others.
As of last summer, the company had 130 employees and an optimistic outlook.
“We see a massive opportunity to bring our transaction infrastructure to new, really important adjacent climate technologies and to expand geographically and to add some new customer types to the platform,” Smith told GeekWire in July 2024.
The new funding was meant to help the company spread beyond the 29 countries in North America and Europe in which it was already operating. LevelTen has raised a total of $125 million.
Some power deals are still being made. In June, the company announced a new clean energy project that it facilitated with Starbucks and the software company Workday to support the construction of a 350 megawatt solar power installation in Central Texas.
Rob Collier, LevelTen’s senior vice president of marketplaces, said that demand for the projects remained high.
“Demand is booming right now for energy, for electricity, for power, particularly clean electrons,” Collier told GeekWire in June. “And that’s driven by a number of pretty strong macroeconomic forcing functions: the need for data centers, and the increased demand due to AI.”
But he did acknowledge that the sector was not attracting new customers for power purchase agreements and that the supply side was getting more difficult, with ongoing challenges with permitting and electrical grid connections, as well as persistent uncertainty around policy and tariffs making it hard to plan and deploy the infrastructure.
“We have deep respect and gratitude for our LevelTen colleagues impacted by this restructuring,” Smith said on Monday. “They are among the best and brightest in the clean energy industry.”
Editor’s note: Story updated to include a response from Bryce Smith.
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