LevelTen Energy, the Seattle-based clean energy transaction platform, will be laying off 60 employees this week, according to a WARN notice filed earlier this month. The cuts are coming as a consequence of recent policy changes, according to CEO Bryce Smith, including July’s budget legislation and still-unsettled tariffs, as well as ongoing problems with permitting.
“By streamlining our structure and adopting the latest technology tools, we’re maintaining our strong financial footing,” Smith told Latitude Media via email. “We have weathered ever-changing markets since 2016, and we’re fully prepared to achieve our current and long-term commercial and environmental priorities.”
The layoffs will take effect this coming Friday, August 15; they will impact roughly a third of the company’s staff, according to the latest Pitchbook numbers.
The Trump administration has resulted in more projects being closed, canceled, or downsized already in 2025 than over the last two years combined, according to an analysis by the research group E2. This amounts to the equivalent of over $22 billion in lost investments.
But the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law in July, is projected to cut clean energy deployment even further — by as much as 59% over the next decade, according to the Rhodium Group. In the wake of its passage, several small solar developers have already announced layoffs, including New Leaf Energy in Massachusetts.
However, the LevelTen layoff suggests that the policy uncertainty is rippling beyond developers, to the market’s service providers.
Launched in 2016, LevelTen is a platform to facilitate clean energy transactions that got its start connecting buyers and sellers of clean energy. Today, the company’s work has expanded to include marketplaces for power purchase agreements, mergers and acquisitions, and tax credit transfers.
Today, the company’s platform boasts of facilitating over 4,500 power purchase agreement offers, for 2,600 projects in 35 countries. Its users include corporate buyers like Salesforce and Starbucks, as well as advisors like BCG and Deloitte.
In 2023, LevelTen collaborated with Google to create a new approach to power purchase agreements, with a goal of shortening the lengthy, bespoke negotiation processes.
While the process of contracting clean energy typically involves four steps — RFP, project selection, term sheet negotiation, then agreement negotiation — LevelTen’s platform consolidates the process. According to a Google blogpost released at the time, the so-called LEAP approach shortens the time required to execute a PPA by roughly 80%, from more than a year to just two months. Just last month, the company expanded LEAP to include energy storage service agreements, in addition to the clean generation that has historically been its focus.
The company has also had a part in the tech industry’s ongoing discussion of strategies for buying clean energy. There are essentially two camps: hourly matching versus prioritizing emissions reduction. LevelTen joined with Microsoft and Google in December of 2023 to create the Granular Certificate Trading Alliance, a coalition operating with that first strategy: building a marketplace for certificates that can help match load to clean energy by the hour.
Last summer, LevelTen raised a $65 million Series D round, bringing its total funding to over $125 million; the global investment firm B Capital led, and participating investors included Google, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, and Prelude Ventures.
As of this week, the company said it has facilitated $25.9 billion in PPAs, asset sales, and other transactions.
