Battery startup Nyobolt Limited, Cambridge, United Kingdom, has received $10 million in a round led by IQ Capital Partners LLP. The company, which spun out of the University of Cambridge, uses niobium-based materials instead of lithium-ion to deliver fast charging and high energy batteries. The Series A funds will be used for global expansion, building new facilities, and growing its engineering and operational teams, Sifted.eu reports.
While the company on Thursday said it had come out of stealth-mode and raised a $10m Series A round led by IQ Capital to help commercialize the technology, consumer cars are not likely to be the first target market for the company.
Sai Shivareddy, cofounder and chief executive, says Nyobolt is likely to start with more niche areas such as Formula E racing cars, fleets of commercial vehicles and possibly even eVTOL.
“The batteries could be used in any car but it makes more sense to start with premium, high-performance uses, rather than the mainstream car market,” says Shivareddy.
The niobium batteries are likely to be around 2-3 times the price of a standard EV battery — a similar price to the high-performance batteries in the market today, ruling them out of the mass market at least at first.
Customers willing to pay this premium could include fleet operators looking to minimize the downtime of their vehicles and public transport operators, Shivareddy said.
In addition to being faster to charge, the niobium batteries have a longer life span than lithium-ion batteries, do not degrade in extreme temperatures in the same way that lithium-ion batteries do, and are much less likely to catch fire.
Nyobolt, which developed out of years of research at the University of Cambridge led by Shivareddy and world-renowned battery materials expert, Professor Clare Grey, now has a team of 25 people. It will use the new funding to expand the team and expand their materials development facility in Cambridge. The first commercial pilots are expected to begin within a year.
“Grid-scale batteries technically work, but there is a question of whether they are commercially viable. Ultimately we have so much more to do in the field of batteries, if we can tackle fast charging that is tackling one small part of it,” said Grey.
Max Bautin, managing partner at IQ Capital, said: “Nyobolt is a ‘new gen’ deeptech start-up founded by a highly experienced team with multiple prior successes; it is based on highly differentiated, patented and highly scalable technology.
“We are very impressed by the team, products and commercial traction to-date and we are convinced that Nyobolt will have a revolutionary impact on Li-ion battery applications, and create new previously impossible uses in markets worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year.”
Cambridge Enterprise investment director Dr Elaine Loukes added: “When Clare and Sai first disclosed their discovery to Cambridge Enterprise nearly five years ago, we recognised that this would have the potential to be a paradigm shift in ultrafast battery charging.
“The importance and significance of this technology to the post-carbon world cannot be overstated. We have worked with the founders from patent application through to seed funding and now A-round funding and we are extremely excited to be part of the ongoing journey of this incredible company.”
