Amprius Technologies merges with Kensington Capital on future electric mobility

Amprius Tech­nolo­gies, which claims to be the leader in lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies with its Sil­i­con Nanowire Anode Plat­form, has com­plet­ed its busi­ness com­bi­na­tion with Kens­ing­ton Cap­i­tal Acqui­si­tion Corp.

The Com­bi­na­tion was approved by Kens­ing­ton share­hold­ers at a spe­cial meet­ing held on 13 Sep­tem­ber, and on 15 Sep­tem­ber its com­mon stock began trad­ing on the NYSE under the tick­er sym­bol “AMPX”.

Amprius Tech­nolo­gies has devel­oped an ultra-high ener­gy den­si­ty lithi­um-ion bat­tery for mobil­i­ty appli­ca­tions by lever­ag­ing sil­i­con nanowire anode tech­nol­o­gy that enables bat­ter­ies with a high­er ener­gy and pow­er den­si­ty, and fast charg­ing over a wide range of oper­at­ing tem­per­a­tures com­pared to con­ven­tion­al graphite lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies.

The com­pa­ny claims it has the high­est ener­gy den­si­ty, com­mer­cial­ly avail­able lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies in the world at 450 Wh/kg or 1150 Wh/L, and has achieved a fast charge capa­bil­i­ty of 80% charge in six min­utes.

It says its bat­ter­ies are unique­ly posi­tioned to address exist­ing and emerg­ing avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions, includ­ing unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems such as drones and high-alti­tude pseu­do satel­lites, as well as appli­ca­tions in elec­tric trans­porta­tion.

In June, Amprius pro­vid­ed bat­ter­ies for the high alti­tude Air­bus Zepher exper­i­men­tal drone air­craft for the US Army from Ari­zona which flew for 64 days.

Amprius CEO Dr Kang Sun said: “This trans­ac­tion pro­vides Amprius with cap­i­tal to scale pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ties to meet the sig­nif­i­cant demand for our sil­i­con nanowire anode tech­nol­o­gy and we look for­ward to fur­ther advanc­ing our mis­sion of enabling the future of elec­tric mobil­i­ty.”

Kens­ing­ton chair­man and CEO Justin Mir­ro added: “Our busi­ness com­bi­na­tion with Amprius will accel­er­ate the adop­tion of elec­tric mobil­i­ty in the sky and on the ground and through the lead­er­ship of Kang Sun, Amprius has cre­at­ed a world-class team that is pro­duc­ing and sell­ing next-gen­er­a­tion bat­ter­ies today.”

Kens­ing­ton vice chair­man and pres­i­dent Dieter Zetsche con­tin­ued: “Amprius bat­ter­ies are tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary and will change the way peo­ple and prod­ucts will move in the future.”

The trans­ac­tion will result in gross pro­ceeds of approx­i­mate­ly $87 mil­lion to Amprius, funds from which are expect­ed to sup­port the com­pa­ny through the con­struc­tion of its gigawatt hour-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty.

Hugh­es Hub­bard & Reed LLP served as legal advi­sor and Mar­cum served as audi­tor to Kens­ing­ton, while Oppen­heimer & Co served as finan­cial advi­sor, Wil­son Son­si­ni Goodrich & Rosati as legal advi­sor, and Singer­Lewak as audi­tor to Amprius.