The company is plugging $30 million into a start-up co-founded by one of Silicon Valley’s favorite scientists.

Source: New York Times | By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jason Karaian, Vivian Giang, Stephen Gandel, Lauren Hirsch, Ephrat Livni, Anna Schaverien and David F. Gallagher

April 6, 2022

Exclusive: New funds for an in-demand Silicon Valley scientist

Charles Koch — the C.E.O. of Koch Industries, the sprawling energy and commodities conglomerate — has funded conservative groups that raise doubts about climate change, part of the considerable political influence that his family fortune wields. Over the past few years, Koch has also been a big investor in batteries — a key technology in the global effort to cut carbon emissions.

An arm of Koch Industries has been betting that the fast-growing electric vehicle industry will generate vast demand for better batteries. Its list of investments includes Aspen Aerogels, Eos Energy Enterprises, Standard Lithium and, now, Blue Current, a start-up helmed by one of Silicon Valley’s favorite scientists, Joseph DeSimone. Koch Strategic Platforms is investing $30 million in Blue Current, which it will use to build a pilot and take it to production, DealBook is first to report.

“We are going to need a lot of batteries,” Elon Musk said last year at a Tesla event. Wood Mackenzie estimates that 18 percent of new cars sold will be electric by 2030, far outstripping current battery output. Battery manufacturing is dominated by companies like Tesla, Panasonic and LG Chem, but new players are emerging. Venture investors in the U.S. put $1.8 billion into the industry in 2021, far above any previous year, according to PitchBook.

DeSimone has helped Blue Current attract buzz. He is named in more than 200 patents, and left a long academic career in the sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University to co-found Carbon, a 3-D manufacturing company, in 2013. (The company raised $680 million in private funding.) DeSimone stepped down as C.E.O. in 2019, becoming chairman of its board, and joined the Stanford faculty the next year. Since then, Silicon Valley has been wondering: What’s next?

Blue Current has worked in stealth mode since 2016, when DeSimone founded it with Nitash Balsara, a professor at U.C. Berkeley. The company is betting on solid-state silicon as a superior technology to batteries that rely on lithium and liquid electrolytes, which are highly flammable. Battery fires are a real problem for electric vehicles: Last year, General Motors had to replace the lithium-ion battery modules in 141,000 cars after some caught on fire. Solid-state batteries using either lithium or silicon are the next big thing for investors, but Blue Current says its silicon-based batteries are safer and have a particularly high energy density, meaning more charge in a smaller space.

Neither battery type is “ready for prime time yet,” said Venkat Srinivasan, the director of the Argonne National Laboratory’s Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science, who has not directly evaluated Blue Current’s technology. A big question is whether the companies in this fast-growing industry can ramp up production enough to become commercially viable. Blue Current now has new funds from a high-profile investor to prove itself.

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder and editor at large of DealBook. He is a co-anchor of CNBC’s "Squawk Box" and the author of “Too Big to Fail.” He is also a co-creator of the Showtime drama series "Billions." @andrewrsorkin • Facebook

Jason Karaian is the editor of DealBook, based in London. He joined The Times in 2020 from Quartz, where he was senior Europe correspondent and later global finance and economics editor. @jkaraian

Stephen Gandel is a news editor for DealBook. He was previously a senior reporter for CBS News, and a columnist at Bloomberg. He has covered Wall Street and financial firms for most of his career. @stephengandel

Lauren Hirsch joined the New York Times from CNBC in 2020, covering business, policy and mergers and acquisitions.  Ms. Hirsch studied comparative literature at Cornell University and has an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. @laurenshirsch

Ephrat Livni reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Quartz, covering law and politics, and has practiced law in the public and private sectors.   @el72champs

Anna Schaverien covers news from Britain and Europe. She is based in London. @annaschav