Sodium-ion battery developer raises $1.6M

TaiSan, a London-based developer of quasi-solid state sodium-ion batteries for use in electric vehicles (EVs), recently raised1.3 million pounds sterling ($1.67 million) to accelerate the development of its technology.

The preseed fundraising round was led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures and followed by Heartfelt VC and Exergon. Co-funded by the European Union, EIT InnoEnergy has investment links to both leading automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and gigafactories. TaiSan also notes that Heartfelt VC is linked to a leading automotive OEM.

According to TaiSan, adoption of the sodium-ion chemistry is widely regarded as one of the next major EV shifts, with a technology offering significant cost, sustainability and safety benefits compared to lithium-ion. The company cites research claiming that the global market is expected to rapidly grow to a value of $1.28 billion by 2028, reaching a capacity of 186 gigawatt hours per year in 2030. TaiSan says it already has signed 12 memorandums of understanding with automakers worldwide, with which it will conduct collaborative research and development activities in the coming years. Its patent-pending technology is based on material science as well as scalable manufacturing methods.

“On behalf of our entire team, I am delighted to announce the completion of this preseed fundraise and would like to thank our expert strategic investors for their vision and full support,” TaiSan CEO Sanzhar Taizhan says. “Sodium-ion offers significant cost, sustainability and safety benefits for the BEV [battery electric vehicle] industry. TaiSan’s novel electrolyte and anode material innovations will bring this technology to the next level—batteries becoming smaller, lighter, with best-in-class energy density and major cost savings, too. Our new investment will enable us to ramp up development and we will be announcing some game-changing results in the very near future.”

Since the company’s 2022 launch, TaiSan's objective has been to realize an “industry-disrupting” increase in the energy density of sodium batteries for EVs. The company has developed its own proprietary polymer electrolyte featuring a metal anode, using sustainable, abundant and environmentally friendly materials across the board. This has resulted in a cell with comparable volumetric and gravimetric energy density to an automotive lithium-ion cell, but with a projected 20 percent cost savings over the most common chemistry for EV batteries, the company says.

TaiSan says its technology offers industry-standard ionic conductivity to enable fast charging, and high mechanical strength to withstand dendrite growth and, with no leakage possible, no risk of fire. The company adds that its combination of a 20 percent cost savings over lithium-ion and its comparable energy density, as well as its design as a drop-in solution to existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities, makes TaiSan’s product cost-effective and designed for mass production.

“For several years, we have been following and investing in sodium-ion technology, as we believe this to be one of the most promising chemistries for batteries,” says Lowina Lundström, CEO of EIT InnoEnergy Scandinavia. “Until now, we have mainly seen this as an option for stationary storage applications. However, when we discovered TaiSan, we immediately saw the potential for sodium-ion to move into new, more demanding applications such as traction batteries or high-power batteries. We are very excited to kick off the collaboration with the team at TaiSan.”

“We are incredibly excited to be a part of this investment round into TaiSan," says Mike Doswell, chief information officer at TSP Ventures. "We believe TaiSan’s technological breakthroughs can unlock the promise of sodium-ion by delivering cheaper, highly functional batteries with significantly lower environmental impact. We look forward to supporting Sanzhar and the team in any way we can to deliver on their impressive vision.”

Over the last two years, TaiSan has received around 500,000 pounds sterling ($642,725) in funding by multiple United Kingdom government and research organizations, including the Department of Transport, The Faraday Institution, Innovate UK, Advanced Propulsion Centre, the Royal Academy of Engineering and Catapult Connected Places.