Cambridge, UK-based Echion Technologies, a company that develops superfast-charging Lithium-Ion batteries, announced that it raised £10M (approx €11.68M) in its Series A round of funding.
Investors
The round was led by CBMM – a supplier of niobium products, and BGF – the UK & Ireland’s investor of equity capital in growth economy companies. Additionally, University of Cambridge, Origin Capital, and other existing investors also participated in this round.
Investor at BGF, Richard Pugh, who joins the Board of Echion, says, “Echion has huge potential to use its cutting-edge battery chemistry technology to accelerate the adoption of batteries in a range of applications. BGF is convinced that batteries will play a critical role in the energy transition, and identified that Echion’s technology brings significant benefits in key areas such as fast-charging or high-power applications.”
Pugh further adds, “This funding round will support an exceptional management team in completing the final push to commercial adoption, working in parallel with a range of very high-quality stakeholders for instance recent joint projects with Johnson Matthey, and a number of other high profile international customers.”
About Echion Technologies
Echion Technologies Ltd is a Cambridge-based spin-out company from the University of Cambridge Engineering Department with expertise on high power anode materials for lithium-ion batteries.
Founded in 2017 by Jean de La Verpilliere and Alex Groombridge, Echion’s products enable cell manufacturers to deliver cost-effective, fast-charging, high-energy density, and long-life power cells for a wide range of markets including automotive, transportation, premium consumer electronics, and grid-storage applications.
Echion provides materials and battery cell manufacturers with packages of protected intellectual property, customisation options, materials synthesis and cell integration know-how, and for different end-user markets.
With its proprietary Mixed Niobium Oxide (MNO) anode material, Echion claims that its cells can safely perform a full fast charge in 6 min, more than 5 times faster than standard Li-ion cells.
Capital utilisation
The proceeds from this round will help Echion to scale up to multi-tonne level material production, demonstrating high-yield and cost-effective manufacturability, as well as to supply the growing demand for material for pre-production trials.
The funds will also be used to strengthen customer support, commercial and R&D operations.
Echion’s co-founder and CEO Jean de La Verpilliere, says, “We are tremendously excited to start the next stage in our journey to bring the Echion Mixed Niobium Oxide products to market. We have great synergies within our investor base, and will keep building a world-leading team to deliver exceptional performance to our customers. We look forward to creating value for our partners and contributing to making superfast charging batteries a reality.”
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