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Lionano, a developer and manufacturer of advanced battery energy storage technologies, today announced the completion of a $22 million Series B financing round led by WAVE Equity Partners, Helios Capital Ventures and NXT Ventures.
Lionano will use the funds to scale up commercial production and global deployment of its high-performance, high-quality cathode materials – a drop-in technology that significantly improves the key performance metrics of lithium-ion batteries for applications in electric vehicles and consumer electronics.
Lionano’s technology has been scientifically validated to increase the energy density of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Through extensive research and development, Lionano invented a proprietary cathode material that is nano-engineered to create batteries with greater storage capacity and cycle life, enabling lighter and lower cost consumer electronics, and longer range for electric vehicles.
A premier supplier to major battery manufacturers globally, Lionano began mass producing this advanced cathode material at 1,200 tons per year in early 2018. The Company plans to ramp up production to 10,000 tons per year by the end of 2019.
“We are very pleased with the strong investor enthusiasm for our technology and the high-quality investors we have attracted in our Series B round,” said Siyu Huang, Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Lionano. “With this funding, Lionano is well-positioned to scale up production capacity of our cathode materials to meet growing global demands for high-performance lithium-ion batteries.”
Lionano was founded in 2013 by a group of Cornell University PhD and MBA graduates in collaboration with Héctor D. Abruña, a distinguished professor of electrochemistry at Cornell. In May 2018, Abruña was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his research on materials development to enhance the performance of fuel cells and batteries.
“One of my goals as a professor is to enable students to gain an appreciation for what chemistry does, the role it plays in everyday life and how insights from the classroom and the laboratory can lead to technological innovations that address some of society’s biggest challenges; such as energy,” said Abruña, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University and Co-Founder of Lionano. “Lionano’s technology is a true breakthrough, far surpassing the performance of currently available materials, and is poised to disrupt and revolutionize the electrical energy storage landscape. It has been a highlight of my career and a real privilege to see Lionano evolve from the classroom, to the lab, to global commercialization.”
With an initial grant from PowerBridgeNY, a collaboration between Cornell NYC Tech, Columbia University, and other institutions, the team of Cornell-trained scientists and executives conducted extensive customer interviews and market validation to shape their strategy for the development of commercially viable advanced battery materials. This market research enabled the rapid development, production, and commercialization of Lionano’s proprietary high-performance cathode material.
The global market for lithium-ion batteries has been growing at an unprecedented rate with global battery manufacturing capacity set to more than double by 2021. This growth is driven by increasing global demand for batteries used in mobile devices and electric vehicles – rapidly growing markets that are expected to reach $75 billion by 2020.