Lyten has announced that it is acquiring manufacturing assets from Northvolt, a Swedish battery manufacturer facing financial difficulties.
Northvolt is selling manufacturing equipment the company inherited in its 2021 acquisition of Cuberg, another battery startup. Lyten will also assume the lease of Cuberg’s old manufacturing facility in San Leandro, California. Lyten will invest $20 million next year to expand facilities in San Leandro and its existing operations in San Jose.
Lyten's technology relies on low-cost and abundant sulfur mixed into a graphene matrix. It also doesn’t use any graphite in its anodes. The Company says the combination results in cells that have greater energy density than nickel-manganese-cobalt flavors but are cheaper to produce than low-cost lithium-iron-phosphate.
Northvolt has been struggling to scale up production of lithium-ion batteries, and missed delivery of a large order from BMW, which presumably caused the automaker to nullify a €2 billion contract. To conserve cash, the Company announced in August that it would cancel research and development at the Cuberg site, laying off nearly 200 employees. Then in September, it said that it was laying off an additional 1,600 employees, about 20% of its workforce, and that it had halted two planned factory expansions.
Lyten, on the other hand, is planning to break ground next year on a factory in Nevada with a planned capacity of 10 gigawatt-hours. When complete, the $1 billion facility will produce lithium-sulfur batteries destined for micromobility vehicles like scooters and e-bikes, and defense and space applications like drones and satellites. The company expects it to come online in 2027.
Lyten’s purchase of Northvolt’s Cuberg assets give it the equipment and space to produce up to 200 megawatt-hours of lithium-sulfur batteries in the Bay Area. That should give the company some revenue while it prepares its larger factory in Nevada.