Drew Baglino: The Former Tesla Senior Vice President Who Founded Heron Power to Rethink the Electrical Transformer

Andrew “Drew” Baglino spent nearly twenty years at Tesla. He started in 2006 as a power electronics engineer and rose to Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy, the second-highest engineering role at the company. He led the technical teams behind the Model S dual motor architecture, the Model 3 motor, the Tesla Powerwall, the Tesla Megapack, and the broader Tesla Energy product portfolio. Baglino left Tesla in April 2024. One year later, in April 2025, he announced Heron Power — a Northern California-based solid-state transformer (SST) startup with $38 million in Series A funding.

The technical alignment between Baglino’s Tesla career and the SST industry is direct. Tesla’s vehicle and energy products use bidirectional power-electronics converters at every voltage class: vehicle traction inverters convert battery DC to motor AC at hundreds of kilowatts, Powerwalls and Megapacks manage AC-DC bidirectional power flow at the grid interface, and Supercharger V3 and V4 stations operate at megawatt-class DC fast charging. The architectural pattern in all of these products is power-electronics-first, with conventional iron-core transformers reduced to peripheral roles. SSTs apply that pattern at the medium-voltage utility distribution interface.

The Heron Power product, branded Heron Link, converts medium-voltage utility AC input to the 800 volts DC required by NVIDIA’s reference AI Factory rack designs. The product is aimed at the AI data center market specifically, although the architecture can serve adjacent applications including fleet EV charging depots and battery storage system grid interconnects. Heron Power has signaled that fleet charging and BESS interconnect product lines are on the company’s longer-term roadmap.

The capital trajectory is rapid even by Silicon Valley standards. $38 million Series A in May 2025; $140 million Series B closed February 18, 2026 co-led by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism Fund and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The combined $178 million raised within ten months is the fastest large-scale fundraising trajectory in the SST industry to date. The capital is earmarked for a 40 gigawatt-per-year US manufacturing facility with full-scale production targeted for the second half of 2027.

The strategic question Baglino’s Heron Power represents is whether the SST market mature enough to support a Tesla-style vertically integrated manufacturer-and-operator, or whether the market structure will favor specialized SST module suppliers selling into integrated data-center construction firms. The Tesla pattern was vertical integration at scale. Whether Baglino can translate that pattern to the medium-voltage grid-interconnect equipment market within a 2027 production-ramp window is the deciding question for Heron Power.

Why It Matters

For assessing execution risk, Drew Baglino’s near-two-decade Tesla record leading the teams behind the Model 3 motor, Powerwall, and Megapack is the strongest founder pedigree in the SST startup field, which helps explain why a16z and Breakthrough backed Heron. Founder credibility does not guarantee a manufacturable product, but it lowers the perceived risk enough to pull the largest disclosed SST raise, and that capital advantage compounds against thinner-funded rivals.

Critical Perspective

Editorial correction: This post is part of MGRID’s Solid-State Transformer industry coverage. As of May 2026, that body of work systematically framed manufacturer announcements, funding rounds, and laboratory demonstrations as commercial deployments. The reality is that field-deployed commercial-class SST in revenue service globally is measured in single digits, and almost every product cited in this series is at “announced” or “funded” stage, not “operational.” Readers should treat the specific claims in this post against the standards documented in our SST Industry Reality Check (the per-claim audit table maps marketing language to verifiable deployment status). The corrective article is the canonical reference for SST industry reality; this post remains published with its original framing so the editorial drift is traceable.

Related Coverage

• Heron Power Closes $140 Million Series B Led by Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy for a 40 GW US Solid-State Transformer Factory: Heron Power’s Series B funding for solid-state transformer factory
• NVIDIA Launches 800V HVDC Supplier Alliance at COMPUTEX 2025 With DG Matrix and 28 Other Partners: NVIDIA’s 800V HVDC supplier alliance aligns with Heron Power’s tech
• DG Matrix Ships First Commercially Available Multiport Solid-State Transformer Aligned With NVIDIA 800VDC AI Factory Spec: DG Matrix ships solid-state transformers aligned with NVIDIA 800VDC spec
• Why the Iron-Core Transformer Has Outlasted Every Replacement for 130 Years (And What Finally Threatens It): The threat to traditional iron-core transformers Heron Power addresses