Ascend Elements secures $300M in funding

Battery recycling and engineered materials company Ascend Elements, Westborough, Massachusetts, says it has secured $300 million in equity and debt financing, including $200 million in Series C equity investments from an international group of strategic and financial investors.

The funding round was led by Fifth Wall Climate and joined by SK Ecoplant, the environmental unit of South Korean conglomerate SK Group. Other new investors include Oman Investment Authority, Lithium Americas Corp., GLy Capital Management’s New Mobility Fund, Mirae Asset Capital & LS and Shinhan GIB. Investors from previous funding rounds, such as Hitachi Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, TDK Ventures, Orbia Ventures, At One Ventures, Trumpf Venture and Doral Energy-Tech Ventures also took part in the latest round.

The funding comes in addition to two U.S. Department of Energy grants totaling $480 million that were recently awarded to Ascend. Combined, the company says the funding will be used to accelerate commercialization of its proprietary, trademarked Hydro-to-Cathode direct precursor synthesis process, which establishes a closed-loop electric vehicle (EV) battery materials supply chain in North America.

The announcement follows Ascend’s recently disclosed plans to invest up to $1 billion to build what it claims is a first-of-its-kind sustainable lithium-ion battery (LIB) materials facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Ascend says the facility, called Apex 1, will produce enough LIB cathode active material precursor (pCAM) and cathode active materials (CAM) to equip up to 250,000 EVs per year.

“Our investment partners understand the urgent need to produce sustainable, lithium-ion battery materials,” Ascend CEO Mike O’Kronley says. “It’s not enough to simply recycle lithium-ion batteries and recover metals for the global commodity markets. Our patented, closed-loop process goes beyond simple battery recycling. Instead, we produce sustainable, high-performance cathode active materials that can go directly into new EV batteries.”

Ascend is currently generating revenue and processing end-of-life batteries and manufacturing scrap at its Base 1 facility in Covington, Georgia, and says it will have 30,000 metric tons of EV battery recycling capacity by the end of this year and will ultimately feed the Apex 1 facility in Kentucky.

The company says it expects to recycle more than 150,000 metric tons of LIBs per year globally by 2026.

“Securing the recyclability of critical, valuable metals in batteries is an essential avenue to achieve energy independence from fossil fuels,” says Peter Gajdos, Fifth Wall partner and co-lead of the Climate Investment team. “We’re proud to support Ascend Elements as they create sustainable batteries in both automotive and stationary storage.”