Lyten buys battery manufacturing property from beleaguered Northvolt | TechCrunch

Lyten, a Silicon Valley battery startup, introduced immediately that it’s buying manufacturing property from Northvolt, a Swedish battery producer that’s dealing with a money crunch.

As a part of the deal, Northvolt is promoting manufacturing tools the corporate inherited in its 2021 acquisition of Cuberg, one other battery startup. Lyten will even assume the lease of Cuberg’s outdated manufacturing facility in San Leandro, California. Lyten will make investments $20 million subsequent 12 months to broaden services in San Leandro and its present operations in San Jose.

Neither Lyten nor Northvolt instantly replied to questions in regards to the deal’s monetary phrases.

Not like many different battery producers, Lyten isn’t counting on nickel, cobalt, manganese, and even iron for its cathode supplies. As a substitute, it’s utilizing low cost and plentiful sulfur blended right into a graphene matrix. On the anode aspect, it doesn’t use any graphite, a fabric which faces export restrictions from China. The corporate says the mix leads to cells which have larger power density than nickel-manganese-cobalt flavors however are cheaper to provide than low-cost lithium-iron-phosphate.

Northvolt has been struggling recently. The corporate has struggled to scale up manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries, and it missed supply of a big order from BMW, which nudged the automaker to nullify a €2 billion contract. 

To preserve money, the corporate introduced in August that it might shutter analysis and growth on the Cuberg website, shedding practically 200 staff. Then in September, it mentioned that it was shedding a further 1,600 staff, about 20% of its workforce, and that it had halted two deliberate manufacturing facility expansions.

It’s unclear whether or not that cost-cutting and take care of Lyten might be sufficient to assist Northvolt get via the approaching 12 months. Final week, Bloomberg reported that Northvolt wants to lift practically $1 billion to offer it some respiration room; the corporate’s operations reportedly burn via about $100 million a month.

Whereas Northvolt is on the skids, Lyten seems ascendent.

The San Jose-based startup is planning to interrupt floor subsequent 12 months on a manufacturing facility in Nevada with a deliberate capability of 10 gigawatt-hours. When full, the $1 billion facility will produce lithium-sulfur batteries destined for micromobility autos like scooters and e-bikes, and protection and area purposes like drones and satellites. The corporate expects it to return on-line in 2027.

Lyten’s buy of Northvolt’s Cuberg property give it the tools and area to provide as much as 200 megawatt-hours of lithium-sulfur batteries within the Bay Space. That ought to give the corporate some income whereas it prepares its bigger manufacturing facility in Nevada.

Lyten has raised $476 million so far at a $1.17 billion valuation, based on PitchBook, together with a $200 million spherical that closed final 12 months.