On Wednesday (July 18), local time, U.S. energy storage startup Peak Energy announced that it closed its Series A funding round, raising $55 million.
The round is understood to have been led by Temasek's early-stage deep tech investment platform Xora Innovation, with participation from Eclipse Ventures, a leading venture capital firm, as an existing investor, and strategic partner TDK Ventures.
Peak Energy also announced its commercialization plans in a statement, with the company planning to deliver its first systems in 2025, and a portion of this financing will be used to build a U.S. factory, which is expected to begin production in 2026.
In recent years, lithium-ion batteries have seen strong growth, dominating portable electronic devices and new energy vehicles to form a more complete industry chain. However, the shortcomings of lithium-ion batteries are also obvious, the most prominent of which is the high cost of lithium due to its scarcity.
The price of lithium climbed sharply in 2022, triggering supply chain concerns, pushing the outside world to start exploring opportunities to replace lithium, and Peak Energy's focus on sodium-ion battery technology is one of them. Sodium-ion is more readily available and much cheaper than lithium.
At the same time, sodium-ion batteries have better safety and low-temperature performance, as well as a higher cycle life.Landon Mossburg, co-founder and CEO of Peak Energy, notes that “they can last as many as 15,000 cycles compared to 8,000 for lithium-ion batteries.”
However, sodium-ion batteries are not as good as lithium-ion batteries in terms of energy density and seem to have a hard time replacing lithium in electric vehicles, but may offer a more cost-effective solution in energy storage.Mossburg said sodium-ion batteries would be a big step forward for large-scale energy storage.
In a statement, Mossburg wrote that as artificial intelligence leads the growth in energy demand, “we must capitalize on the potential of renewable energy.” He added that utility-scale storage powered by sodium-ion will be the answer to ensuring success on a resilient, decarbonized grid.
It is understood that Peak Energy's executive team, many of whom have clean energy backgrounds, have worked for Tesla, SunPower and other green energy-related companies, and Landon Mossburg has also served as an executive at Northvolt, Europe's “battery leader”.
Last year, Northvolt announced that the company's sodium-ion battery technology has made a major breakthrough in energy density, its development of sodium-ion batteries with a peak energy density of more than 160 watt-hours per kilogram, and free of lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Source: Sodium Core
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