Deep Green's Parent Company Has Negative £435 Million in Net Assets

LANSING, Mich. — Deep Green Technologies USA LLC was formed in Delaware on July 17, 2025. It qualified as a foreign LLC in Michigan on August 21, 2025, with a virtual registered agent in Grand Rapids called Firstbase Agent LLC. It has no physical office in the United States, no identified US law firm, and no employees in Michigan. Its LARA filing lists its business purpose as "Data centre co-location services," with the British spelling, and the entity is less than nine months old.

This is the company that would own the land at Cedar and Larch if the Lansing City Council approves the sale. The company that controls it is Octopus Energy Group, the UK's largest household energy supplier. In July 2025, after three UK suppliers including Octopus failed to meet capital adequacy requirements set by Ofgem (the UK's energy regulator, equivalent to a state public utility commission), the CEO of their largest competitor said this:

It's criminal that Ofgem is putting the industry in a situation where that could happen again. They're not applying their own rules. They're increasing the risk of systemic failure in the market.Chris O'Shea, CEO of Centrica (parent of British Gas), Centrica half-year results, July 2025

What Deep Green has built

Deep Green Technologies Ltd was incorporated in the UK in September 2021 by Mark Bjornsgaard, whose background is in music software and venture capital. The company operates two sites: a computing unit in a leisure centre swimming pool in Exmouth, Devon (~28 kilowatts, using GPU waste heat to warm the water), and a 1.1 megawatt cloud computing facility in Swindon hosting Civo.

Two UK sites totaling approximately 1.13 megawatts is the complete operational track record for a company proposing to build a 24 megawatt facility in Lansing, 22 times larger than anything it has completed. Multiple UK projects in Manchester, York, Bradford, and Lincoln remain in development or planning with none yet operational, despite a GBP 200 million investment from Octopus in January 2024.

Who controls Deep Green

Deep Green presents itself as an independent company, but UK Companies House filings tell a different story. The ownership chain runs through four entities, each worth understanding.

Octopus Group (Octopus Capital Limited, London, est. 2000)
  └── Octopus Energy Group Limited (Greg Jackson, CEO)
      └── Octopus Renewables Ltd (trading as Octopus Energy Generation)
          └── Sky OETF DG JV Holdings Limited
              (incorporated Dec 11, 2023)
              └── Deep Green Technologies Ltd

Octopus Group (formally Octopus Capital Limited) is a London financial services holding company founded in 2000 by Simon Rogerson and Christopher Hulatt, who holds 43 active directorships across the Octopus empire. The group is not an energy company. Its subsidiaries span venture capital, real estate, WealthTech, special education schools, probate services, and financial coaching, alongside the energy businesses. Hulatt donated GBP 2,500 to the Conservative Party in 2019, and the company donated GBP 12,500 to the Conservatives in 2018.

Octopus Energy Generation (formally Octopus Renewables Limited), led by CEO Zoisa North-Bond, manages over GBP 6.8 billion across six or more funds with 4.9 gigawatts of capacity in 21 countries, but its track record with listed investors raises questions about how Octopus treats the people whose money is at risk. The Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust (ORIT), listed on the London Stock Exchange in December 2019 at 100 pence per share, traded at approximately 56.5 pence as of March 2026, a 43.5% loss in share price. ORIT's market price fell so far below the value Octopus assigned to its own assets that the gap reached 38-40%, meaning investors could only sell their shares for roughly 60 pence for every pound Octopus said the fund was worth. By Octopus's own accounting, the fund gained 31.2% since IPO, but shareholders who actually bought and held lost 11.3%. Octopus collected management fees based on its own valuation of the assets rather than the price shareholders could actually get, and only agreed to revise the fee structure in November 2025 after sustained pressure. In the Titan VCT, another Octopus-managed fund, shares have fallen from 100 pence at IPO to 35 pence (65% capital destruction), with 60% of shareholders reporting dissatisfaction and over 20% voting against board recommendations at the June 2025 AGM.

Sky OETF DG JV Holdings Limited was incorporated on December 11, 2023. Eight days later, two Octopus Energy Generation employees were appointed to Deep Green's board: Peter Dias (Investment Director) and Harry Manisty (Head of Energy Transition Investing). The holding company owns 25-50% of Deep Green's shares but controls 50-75% of voting rights. In September 2025, Octopus replaced the board's one independent director (Jared Pearl, formerly of BP and energy infrastructure firm VTTI) with two more of its own employees, bringing Octopus's board representation to 4 of 7 seats. Combined with majority voting rights and control of the holding company, Octopus runs Deep Green.

Octopus Energy Group's financial condition

Octopus Energy Group is the UK's largest household energy supplier, serving 12.9 million customer accounts, and it is also one of the three suppliers failing Ofgem's capital adequacy requirements. The regulator requires GBP 115 per dual-fuel customer in Adjusted Net Assets. Octopus's adjusted net assets in 2024 were negative GBP 435 million.

After two years of profitability, Octopus Energy Group reported a GBP 255 million net loss in FY2025. Cash flows are being sustained by deferring payments to creditors, with trade payables increasing by GBP 725 million. No new shareholder equity was injected for the first time in the company's history.

The CEO, the government, and the money

Greg Jackson, Octopus Energy's CEO, was formerly a director of LabourList, a Labour Party activist organization. He now sits on the UK Cabinet Office Board and the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, both appointed by Prime Minister Starmer in July 2025. Octopus met Conservative ministers 41 times in 2023 and Labour energy ministers 16 times in the first six months of the new government.

While Jackson holds these advisory roles, the state-owned British Business Bank invested GBP 25 million in Octopus's Kraken Technologies subsidiary as part of a spin-off valued at USD 8.65 billion. Kraken's shares are pledged as collateral for the parent company's liquidity facilities with NatWest, Shell Energy, HSBC, and BNP Paribas. Financial analysts have described this as a "reverse Parent Company Guarantee" that signals lender concerns about the parent's stability. The Business Secretary denied it was "a bung."

Regulatory record

The UK energy regulator Ofgem found Octopus failed to send final bills to 34,494 prepayment meter customers and ordered GBP 1.483 million in refunds and compensation. Ofgem separately found Octopus failed to pay guaranteed standards compensation to approximately 19,000 customers, resulting in roughly GBP 750,000 in payments. The Advertising Standards Authority banned an Octopus advert claiming heat pump installations "from GBP 500" after finding only 5.8% of installations met that price. Octopus is under an ongoing Ofgem compliance engagement over smart meter obligations.

During the UK energy crisis, Octopus was one of the suppliers forcibly installing prepayment meters in homes of customers who owed money, including vulnerable people. A moratorium was imposed in February 2023. Octopus was re-authorized in January 2024 under strict conditions.

Octopus's green credentials

Octopus markets itself as a green energy company. Eighty percent of the electricity it supplies to UK customers comes through REGO certificates, which are transferable credits that do not guarantee the actual electron delivered to a home is from a renewable source, with only 20% coming from their own generation assets.

Origin Energy, which holds approximately 22% of Octopus Energy Group, operates coal-fired power plants in Australia. Octopus Energy Generation's funds own a waste incinerator in Dunbar, Scotland that drew over 2,000 community objections during the planning process.

Whose money is behind this

The GBP 200 million Octopus invested in Deep Green flows through two Luxembourg-domiciled fund vehicles (the Sky Fund and the Octopus Energy Transition Fund) whose investors include Nest (a UK government-backed pension serving 12 million members), the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (the Irish sovereign development fund), and local government pension funds including Cornwall and Wandsworth. If Deep Green fails in Lansing, these pension funds absorb the capital loss while Octopus loses management fees but has limited direct capital exposure, and Lansing loses the land.

What the US entity looks like

The people who have presented to Lansing City Council, the Planning Commission, and neighborhood associations on behalf of Deep Green are not Deep Green employees. Josh Hovey works for Bellwether Public Relations in Lansing, Rob Stolpestad works for Exeter Management in St. Paul, and Jack Pressman is a development contractor. The UK founders and CEO fly in for hearings, while Luke Gavin (VP for North America) is the only confirmed Deep Green employee with a US-facing role whose base of operations is not publicly identified.

Deep Green Technologies USA LLC has no Michigan lobby registration, no Foreign Agents Registration Act filing, no SEC filings, and no campaign contributions from any employee in Michigan. The buy-sell agreement includes a 24-month groundbreaking deadline with a city buyback clause, but if Deep Green breaks ground and then stalls, the city will have sold public downtown land to a nine-month-old shell company controlled by a financially distressed UK conglomerate with no completed projects at this scale anywhere in the world.

Who is the council doing business with? If this company breaks ground and then stalls, who do Lansing residents call? If the fuel cells degrade and BWL ratepayers bear the replacement cost, who in Octopus's corporate chain is accountable to a city council in Michigan? If the entity that owns the land is a Delaware LLC with a virtual mailbox in Grand Rapids, controlled by a holding company in Luxembourg, controlled by a fund manager in London, where does a resident file a complaint?

Sources

UK Companies House: Deep Green Technologies Ltd (#13601125). Sky OETF DG JV Holdings Limited (#15342717). Octopus Energy Group Limited (#09718624). Michigan LARA Entity 900082736. Ofgem Financial Resilience Transparency Report (April 2025). Centrica calls for customer ban (Yahoo Finance). Watt-Logic: Octopus and Kraken financial analysis (January 2026). Minister denies "bung" to Labour adviser (Yahoo Finance). Ofgem: prepayment meter billing failures. Ofgem: guaranteed standards failures. ASA ruling: heat pump advert. Ofgem: prepayment meter forced installation. Greg Jackson lobbying access. NAO: Bulb Energy investigation. LabourList. Cabinet Office Board. Bellwether Public Relations. Deep Green website. BusinessGreen reporting.