Addionics nabs investment for smart battery tech

Israeli battery tech startup Addionics raised a US$27 million Series A round to fund its ongoing efforts to redesign battery architecture for the electric vehicle market and similar industries in order to boost performance and reduce costs, the company said Tuesday.

The investment was led by Deep Insight, an Israeli venture fund focused on deep tech startups and established by Jeff Horing, the founder of Insight Partners, together with Israeli firms Catalyst Fund and Delek Motors, and Dr. Boaz Schwartz, the managing director at Deutsche Bank.

Additional backers included United States industrial aluminium company Novelis, Canadian mobility technology company Magna International, Japan’s JX Nippon Mining & Metals, and Dr. David Deak, a US entrepreneur focused on battery supply chains and energy storage who previously worked at Tesla’s battery operations. He will be joining Addionics’ board of directors.

Founded in 2017, Addionics aims to rethink battery architecture, developing smart 3D Electrodes that it says can improve battery performance, capacity, charging time, and lifetime.

“We are changing the architecture of the electrodes, not the chemistry,” Dr. Moshiel Biton, co-founder and CEO of Addionics, told The Times of Israel in a previous interview. In doing so, Addionics’ tech can enhance the performance of batteries no matter the type of battery chemistry. The company hopes to “integrate the solution into production lines and make it a core component of the manufacturing process,” Biton said.

He explained that existing battery technologies were currently not fit to support a future of all-electric transportation mainly because of energy storage. Addionics’ 3D structure design, made with AI algorithms and modelling, delivers high power and high energy by enabling greater loading of active materials, improving heat dissipation and the activation of cooling systems, he said. Its current collector geometries address the thermal, energy density, and mechanical challenges that plague existing batteries, the company claims.

By focusing on architecture and physics, Addionics is “betting on the entire race to make batteries more scalable and safer, not just on chemistry,” where competitors are currently pouring their energies, Biton said. “We are chemistry-agnostic so you can think of us as a complementary solution.”

Addionics is already working with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and Tier I companies on integrating its tech into existing assembly lines. Last summer, the company announced a new partnership with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), a British technology and innovation center, and the University of Warwick’s WMG, an academic department focused on knowledge transfer in engineering and tech, to cooperate on improvements in lithium-ion battery cell performance and manufacturing processes. The collaboration is known as Project STELLAR (Smart Three-dimensional ELectrode Lithium-ion batteries with Automated Robotics) and is backed by Innovate UK, the government-funded innovation agency.

The Israeli company, based in Tel Aviv and London, said it plans to use the new investment to expand its team, increase activities in the US and Germany, and reach commercialisation by 2024.

“We look forward to accelerating our product development and laying the necessary groundwork for commercialisation as we remain committed to our mission of revolutionising the battery industry by building the best battery cell architecture in the market,” Biton said in a statement Tuesday.

Earlier this month, another Israeli battery tech company, StoreDot announced that it pulled in an $80 million investment led by Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer VinFast, and unveiled what it called the “world’s first” silicon-dominant battery prototype capable of recharging in just 10 minutes.

Founded in 2012, StoreDot has been developing lithium ion-based battery technologies using nanomaterials and organic and inorganic compounds in a process the company says redefines the chemistry of conventional lithium-ion batteries and enables ultra-fast charging. Its battery tech is geared toward the mobile and industrial markets.