Ionblox increases Series B to $32m with investment from Lilium, Applied Ventures, Temasek and Catalus Capital

Lithi­um-ion bat­tery com­pa­ny Ion­blox has increased its Series B invest­ment round to $32 mil­lion with part­ners that include orig­i­nal investors Lil­i­um and Applied Ven­tures, who are joined by Temasek and Catalus Cap­i­tal.

The com­pa­ny will use the fund­ing to scale its tech­nol­o­gy, devel­op advanced high-pow­er cells for elec­tric avi­a­tion, and pro­to­type fast-charge cells for Elec­tric Vehi­cles, with its bat­ter­ies devel­oped using high-per­for­mance lithi­um-ion cells that have ‘pre-lithi­at­ed sil­i­con dom­i­nant anodes’.

Pre-lithi­at­ed Sil­i­con anode tech­nol­o­gy is claimed to enable a com­bi­na­tion of up to 50% high­er ener­gy den­si­ty, five times more pow­er, and an extreme fast charge of 10 min­utes com­pared with con­ven­tion­al lithi­um-ion cells. Ion­blox is cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing its large for­mat pouch cells of up to 50 Ah on its pilot pro­duc­tion lines.

“We are com­mer­cial­is­ing next-gen­er­a­tion lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies with pre-lithi­at­ed sil­i­con dom­i­nant anodes in order to trans­form the future of elec­tric mobil­i­ty,” said Sujeet Kumar, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer at Ion­blox.

“The fund­ing from this round will enable us to take an impor­tant step in our jour­ney to scale our tech­nol­o­gy and set up our own cell man­u­fac­tur­ing in the US and oth­er key mar­kets.”

Lil­i­um chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Yves Yem­si added: “The Ion­blox tech­nol­o­gy enables one of the high­est per­for­mance cells for eVTOL air­craft exist­ing today and we’re proud to part­ner with Ion­blox for our con­form­ing air­craft.

“Test results to date are show­ing the tech­nol­o­gy will deliv­er not only supe­ri­or ener­gy and pow­er den­si­ty for the Lil­i­um Jet at launch but also very good age­ing per­for­mance. We are excit­ed to con­tin­ue our work togeth­er to sup­port the con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and the ongo­ing indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy.”

To com­mer­cialise its next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy, Ion­blox has received a devel­op­ment con­tract from Unit­ed States Advanced Bat­tery Con­sor­tium to devel­op low-cost, fast-charge elec­tric vehi­cle bat­ter­ies where its cell per­for­mance has been ver­i­fied by Ida­ho Nation­al Lab, and is also part­ner­ing with lead­ing semi­con­duc­tor equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­er Applied Mate­ri­als.

In June last year, Lil­i­um select­ed Astron­ics Cor­po­ra­tion to design, devel­op, and build its elec­tri­cal pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. Astron­ics will be respon­si­ble for the sec­ondary pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion units (SPDUs) and charg­ing pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion units (CPDUs). Each Lil­i­um Jet will be equipped with two SPDUs and one CPDU.

Astron­ics Cor­po­ra­tion to devel­op and design the Lil­i­um Jet’s elec­tri­cal pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem