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Sunnova Energy

Residential solarUSA
New to Unitard
💀 Dead / Bankrupt
Peak $5 BillionToday
~-99%
from peak
  1. 🦄
    Became a unicorn
    2019
  2. 📈
    Peak valuation
    $5 Billion ’21
  3. 💔
    Became a Unitard
    2023
  4. 💸
    Last valuation
    Wiped out
Capital raised
$1.54B
Total raised
$382K/day
Raised per day

Total raised averaged per day over approximately 11.0 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology

Funding: company profile / DCFmodeling
Current status
Filed Chapter 11 (June 2025) with ~$8.9B debt; core business sold for ~$118M; delisted (OTC: NOVAQ).

The rise & fall

9 moments · 2012–2025

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2012
Founded in Houston
John Berger launches a financier that leases rooftop solar to homeowners.
Wikipedia
2019
IPO makes it a unicorn
Lists on the NYSE in July 2019; the residential-solar financier is valued around $1B.
Reuters
2021
The peak: ~$5B in the clean-energy boom$5B
Green-energy euphoria carries the market value to about $5B.
Macrotrends
2023
Rates up, net metering down
Higher interest rates and California's net-metering cuts stall rooftop-solar demand; debt-fueled growth gets expensive.
Reuters
2023
Slips out of the club
The solar selloff pulls the market cap below $1B.
Macrotrends
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2023–25
Glassdoor reviews charted the descent in real time: employees described layoff rounds every few months despite all-hands assurances the cuts were over, colleagues who learned they were gone only when their logins died, and dealers and suppliers going unpaid in the final stretch.
2025
Going-concern warning; the $3B DOE guarantee is cancelled
With roughly $8.9B of debt and dwindling cash, auditors flag substantial doubt and Washington pulls the loan guarantee.
SEC filing
Jun 8 ’25
Chapter 11 — joins the Unitard Club 💔
Files with roughly $8.9B of debt and just $13.5M of cash on hand.
Court filing
2025
Core business sold for ~$118M$118M
Solaris Assets buys the operating business; the shares are delisted to the OTC as NOVAQ.
Kroll
$4.95Bof peak value erased · 11 years

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Sunnova Energy was one of the largest US residential-solar financiers, leasing rooftop systems to more than 500,000 customers; its market value reached about $5B in the 2021 clean-energy boom. Rising rates, California net-metering cuts, a cancelled $3B DOE loan guarantee and a rooftop-solar demand slump left it with roughly $8.9B of debt and scant cash. Sunnova filed for Chapter 11 in June 2025, sold its core business for about $118M and was delisted.

Source: SEC / Houston Public Media / Kroll (peak market cap ~$5B 2021; ~$8.9B long-term debt, $13.5M cash; Chapter 11 June 8 2025; core business sold to Solaris Assets ~$118M; delisted to OTC as NOVAQ)

Where they went

  • John Berger
    Founder & CEO who led Sunnova to peak; stepped down March 2025 before the June 2025 Chapter 11
    Chief Executive Officer at Otovo
    LinkedIn ↗

Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-19. See our methodology.

Disclosed investors (7)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard

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