Group14’s high performance battery technology gets super charged with $400M investment

Woodinville, Wash.-based mostly Team14 Technologies has elevated $400 million in undertaking capital that will supercharge the commercialization of its battery know-how.

The Series C round was led by Porsche AG, which plans to use the company’s technology in some of its electric vehicles. Team14 has developed a silicon-carbon composite content that can exchange the graphite anodes in lithium-ion batteries, increasing their efficiency by 50% and delivering more quickly recharging times.

Though Porsche is the first publicly introduced shopper, the technological know-how can enhance lithium battery efficiency across purposes and the organization is operating with aviation businesses and shopper electronics suppliers as effectively.

“We’ve tested the technological innovation and proven it across 40 various customers,” explained CEO and co-founder Rick Luebbe. “And now the force is on us to assistance the desire we see. The demand for this is a excellent. And so we have to establish manufacturing ability as promptly as probable to retain up. We’re actually likely to guide the transformation into the silicon battery market.”

Team14 introduced in 2015, but Luebbe’s operate in this house dates back again significantly farther. The startup spun out of EnerG2, a University of Washington spinoff that Luebbe co-founded in 2003 and was obtained by German chemical firm BASF.

Team14 previously raised $41 million in enterprise capital and funding from the U.S. Section of Electrical power.

Other members in this most current round include things like OMERS Money Markets, Decarbonization Associates (a partnership between Temasek and BlackRock), Riverstone Holdings LLC, Vsquared Ventures and Moore Strategic Ventures.

The spherical is the major VC financial commitment to be announced so far this calendar year in Washington state. Team14 did not share the company’s present-day valuation.

The new funding will assist build a manufacturing facility in Jap Washington’s Moses Lake that need to come on the web in the 2nd fifty percent of upcoming calendar year. Team14 already has a facility in that location that is operating on engineering and R&D. Luebbe reported he likes the locale due to the fact there’s lots of land, a great labor pool and obtain to clean up, economical hydro-electric power.

“It’s variety of an suitable location and, frankly, not just for us,” Luebbe explained. “I consider Moses Lake is going to be a centre of battery ecosystems.”

The organization is also creating a joint factory with SK Team in South Korea that is scheduled to commence working later this calendar year. Team14’s headquarters in Woodinville incorporates producing and R&D. The 90-staff company has new jobs accessible throughout its amenities.

The demand from customers for far better batteries is staying pushed by initiatives all over the world to shift to electrification and absent from the consumption of fossil fuels that are warming the planet. Porsche not too long ago introduced that it is aiming for 80% of its new automobiles to be all-electric powered by 2030.

Group14 is doing work with Cellforce Group, a Porsche subsidiary, to integrate the engineering. Cellforce ideas by 2024 to start out producing lithium-silicon battery cells in a plant in South Germany for use in Porsche EVs.

“The battery cells are the combustion chamber of the upcoming,” reported Lutz Meschke, deputy chairman and member of the govt board of Finance and IT at Porsche AG, in a assertion.

The technological innovation expenses a lot more, Luebbe mentioned, but for the reason that it packs additional electrical power into less battery cells, that gives some personal savings. And the technological know-how can be relatively effortlessly adopted by battery producers.

“You really do not have to get any new products. You really don’t have to retrain any individual,” he reported. “All you have to do is have a a bit distinct recipe for what goes in that slurry combination.”