On Monday, TDK Ventures, the recently-recharged corporate venture capital arm of the legacy Japanese electronics maker, which backs next-generation digital and energy technologies, announced that it has led a $3 million seed-stage venture capital round in Boston-based additive manufacturing startup AM Batteries (AMB).
The round was co-led by West Coast tech VC Foothill Ventures, with additional participation from Tier I manufacturer SAIC Capital, Vietnamese EV OEM VinFast, Israeli energy techn VC Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, and Silicon Valley fund Creative Ventures.
The fresh funds will help AMB to commercialize its dry electrode coating technology, which improves the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries. According to TDK Ventures, AMB’s electrodes not only have the potential to save cost, but also offer a path toward fast charging, higher-energy density, and adaptability. It notes that AMB has early industry attraction to adopt this technology for pilot scale to mass production.
AMB has developed a novel additive Li-ion manufacturing technique by which the active materials (cathode/anode) are charged and sprayed on to metal foil current collectors, which are then processed to its final state to make batteries without the use of toxic solvent. This dry-coating method offers significant cost and energy savings over state-of-the-art “wet coating” procedures, providing a dramatic improvement to the sustainability of the overall cell making process. TDK Ventures’ investment in AMB marks its continued focus on core technologies that catalyze broader decarbonization efforts via sustainable and scalable battery technologies.
“Our technology is extremely innovative and outside the box,” said AMB Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Yan Wang. “TDK Ventures’ proprietary knowledge and unique insights in the battery-manufacturing space helped validate our own technological progress. They also played a significant role in bringing a broad syndicate of financial, strategic, and OEM partners together by sharing their key techno-economic insights, thereby helping us assemble a world-class set of partners for our company.”
TDK Ventures notes that EV become more prevalent, demand for lithium-ion batteries is already at an all-time high, and expected to reach 2,000 GWh of needed capacity by 2030. Given this manufacturing demand, the industry’s environmental and carbon footprint are under increased scrutiny. Current wet-electrode manufacturing techniques consume up to half of the total manufacturing energy of the entire battery, require significant factory footprint to dry the solvent, and increase the capital expenditure required for manufacturing plants. Refining manufacturing techniques to remove the solvent is one of the most fundamental problems for all battery manufacturers today in the consumer electronics, large scale energy storage, and EV markets.
A ringing endorsement
During Tesla’s 2020 Battery Day last year, CEO Elon Musk said that dry-electrode technology is one of the most vital components for a step-change in the cost reduction of EV batteries; he also stated significant room for the technology’s maturation and improvement. Tesla acquired Maxwell Technologies in early 2019 with an eye on potentially commercializing their dry-electrode technology.
“AMB has engineered a three-step electro-spraying system that seamlessly aligns with the existing process flow of lithium-battery manufacturing, which is not the case in competitive solutions, putting them at the very forefront of the industry,” said Nicolas Sauvage, President of TDK Ventures. “In the future, we believe that battery manufacturers will not only differentiate on energy density, fast charge ability, or cost/kW, but also on the amount of CO2 emitted per the amount of energy stored, which is a measure of how sustainable one’s electrode manufacturing process is. This positioning is a whole new value proposition for next-generation battery manufacturers and EV OEMs that align with consumer needs.”
“The battery market for EVs is one of the world’s most important markets, and this technology addresses two of the biggest issues: cost and sustainability,” said Foothill Ventures Managing Partner Eric Rosenblum. “Dr. Yan Wang has proven himself to be one of the most successful inventors and serial entrepreneurs in the battery space, and we are also thrilled to partner again with TDK Ventures.”
In January 2020, AMB’s founders secured a $2.4 million, three-year research grant by the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), based on its strong foundational academic progress.
