Flex Ltd. has agreed to acquire Poway, California-based EPC Power for approximately $4.4 billion, folding one of North America's largest independent grid-scale inverter manufacturers into the contract-manufacturing giant's clean-energy portfolio. The deal, announced in early September, hands Flex a specialised power-electronics business at a moment when utility-scale battery storage is the fastest-growing segment of the US electricity market.
Why the target
EPC Power makes megawatt-class power conversion systems – the boxes that sit between lithium-ion batteries and the grid – with its CAB inverter platform installed at utility BESS projects across the United States. The company has scaled US-made production during a period when Chinese inverter imports have faced growing tariff and content-rule pressure, and its book of orders benefits from federal domestic-content bonuses under the Inflation Reduction Act. That combination – US manufacturing plus preferential subsidies – is what makes it a $4.4 billion target for Flex.
How it fits Flex's clean-tech portfolio
Flex has been rebalancing away from consumer hardware and toward power electronics, cloud infrastructure and automotive for the past five years. The company already builds AI data-center power distribution units and EV battery packs; EPC Power extends that stack to the grid-storage end of the same energy chain. Post-close, Flex will be able to bid on full BESS solutions – battery integration, inverter, thermal management and packaging – rather than sub-assemblies, competing with Eos, Tesla Megapack and Wärtsilä.
Battery storage M&A heats up
The transaction is the biggest US battery-storage acquisition of 2026 and lands during a wave of consolidation. China's freeze on new storage cell factories has pushed Western developers toward domestic supply, CATL has begun shipping sodium-ion BESS, and Africa's first solar-plus-storage baseload plant came online at the DRC's Kamoa mine last month. The subtext across all of these headlines is the same: storage is no longer an accessory to renewables, it is the asset class that determines whether they pencil out.
Why it matters
At $4.4 billion, Flex is paying a rich multiple for what remains a specialised industrial business – a sign that strategic buyers now treat grid-scale inverters the way they treated automotive tier-one suppliers a decade ago. The deal accelerates the vertical integration underway across the BESS stack, and it hands EPC Power the balance sheet to expand capacity without diluting founders further. Regulators will scrutinise the transaction for both antitrust and defence-of-supply-chain reasons, but no obvious concentration barrier is expected. Closing is targeted for the first half of 2027.
Reporting based on coverage from BatteryTech Network, Energy-Storage.News and company statements.