Batteries News

TaiSan raises £1.3m in funding round led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures to accelerate development of best-in-class quasi-solid-state sodium battery technology

quasi-solid-state sodium battery technology

TaiSan raises £1.3m in funding round led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures to accelerate development of best-in-class quasi-solid-state sodium battery technology.

Game-changing battery electric vehicle technology

TaiSan, the UK company pioneering quasi-solid-state sodium batteries for the automotive industry, today announces the raise of £1.3 million, investment which will accelerate development of its game-changing battery electric vehicle (BEV) technology.

Led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures and followed by Heartfelt VC and Exergon, TaiSan’s
pre-seed round is backed by Europe’s leading strategic e-mobility funds. Co-funded by the European Union, EIT InnoEnergy has investment links to both leading automotive OEMs and battery gigafactories. Heartfelt VC is also linked to a leading automotive OEM.

Innovative and sustainable materials

Adoption of sodium-ion chemistry is widely regarded as one of the next major BEV shifts, offering significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits vs lithium-ion, with the global market expected to rapidly grow and be worth £1 billion by 20281 reaching a capacity of 186GWh/year in 20302.

Launched in 2022 with the objective of realising an industry disrupting increase in the energy density of sodium batteries for BEVs, TaiSan has developed its own proprietary, innovative electrolyte and anode materials. The company’s Gen 1.0 product has resulted comparable volumetric and gravimetric battery energy density to an automotive lithium-ion, but with a projected 20 percent cost saving over the most common chemistry for BEV batteries. TaiSan technology is based on sustainable and abundant, environmentally friendly materials across the board (i.e., no lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper metals are used).

Funding will advance development

Its advanced technology offers industry-standard ionic conductivity to enable fast-charging, reduction of dendrite growth that usually limits battery cycle life, high capacity anode, and with no leakage possible, no risk of fire. The IP is designed as a ‘drop-in’ solution to existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities to scale faster with the lower barrier to the market.

TaiSan has already signed a number of MOUs with automotive manufacturers from 7 different countries. The latest funding will help the company to progress with agreed customers milestones and advance the development of the company’s innovative electrolyte and anode materials.

Sanzhar Taizhan, Founder and CEO of TaiSan, commented:

On behalf of our entire team, I am delighted to announce the completion of this pre-seed fund raise and would like to thank our expert strategic investors for their vision and full support.

“Our quasi-solid-state sodium battery offers significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits for the BEV industry. TaiSan’s novel electrolyte and anode innovations will bring this chemistry to the next level – batteries becoming smaller, lighter, with best-in-class energy density, and major cost savings too. Our new investment will allow us to ramp-up development and we will be announcing some game-changing results in the very near future. Watch this space.”

Lowina Lundström, CEO of EIT InnoEnergy Scandinavia, commented:

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.

“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.”

Mike Doswell, CIO of TSP Ventures, commented:

We are incredibly excited to be a part of this investment round into TaiSan.

“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.”

Growth since launching in 2022

Over the last two years, TaiSan has received close to a total of £500,000 in funding by multiple UK Government and Research organisations, including the Department for Transport (DfT), The Faraday Institution, Innovate UK, Advanced Propulsion Centre, Royal Academy of Engineering and Catapult Connected Places. In October 2023, TaiSan was recognised with the award of “Best Growth Potential” by Professor Sarah Sharples (Chief Scientific Advisor to DfT).

The TaiSan team is made up of experienced battery scientists and electrochemists, formerly of MIT, Imperial College, Jaguar Land Rover and The Faraday Institution organisations. Founder Sanzhar Taizhan has received multiple UK battery awards and is a former JLR battery engineer. He also became honouree of the Forbes Kazakhstan 30 under 30, after founding and leading two UK’s Warwick University technical teams that reached finals and placed “top 3” worldwide at Hyperloop contests run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and The Boring Company.

READ the latest Batteries News shaping the battery market

TaiSan raises £1.3m in funding round led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures to accelerate development of best-in-class quasi-solid-state sodium battery technology. source

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