Amid a challenging environment for battery startups, Cira has raised $375 million to finish construction of a U.S. factory by the end of 2025 to scale up its next-generation battery technology for customers including Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic.
Sira, formerly known as Sira Nanotechnologies, expects to finish construction of its Moses Lake, Washington, facility in the first quarter of next year, where it will begin mass production of its branded Titan silicon anode material.
The all-equity Series G round, led by existing investor Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Coats and Perry Creek Capital, comes at a time when other electric vehicle battery companies are struggling to bring products to market and stay afloat.
Earlier this year, Ionic Materials shut down operations, Umicore sharply cut its guidance citing expected EV sales weakness, and Frey Batteries, a startup that entered the stock market in 2021 by merging with a special acquisition company, has also failed to ramp up production of its next-generation batteries.
“Obviously the market is tough – late-stage growth, high capital expenditures, EVs,” Sila founder and CEO Gene Berdichevsky told TechCrunch, “but we have great technology, we’ve scaled, our factory is on track, and this will get us to the milestone that everyone in the world wants to see: getting cars on the road.”
Silla’s ability to raise such a large amount of funding in a tough environment can be seen as a sign of confidence in the company’s commitment to battery chemistry and its ability to scale production. Berdichevsky, who was Tesla’s seventh employee before founding Silla in 2011, previously told TechCrunch that getting the science right isn’t enough if you can’t execute it in a way that’s fundamentally scalable.
This is especially true in a world where hundreds of thousands of EVs are scheduled to hit the market over the next few years and automakers are increasingly looking for ways to end their reliance on China for critical battery materials.
Sila’s answer was to replace graphite in lithium-ion battery anodes with silicon, a material that can be produced anywhere, rather than being mined and processed in a specific region. Using silicon would allow for a more local supply chain for a key battery material, as well as denser, cheaper battery cells that could speed up EV charging, Berdichevsky says. And by replacing just one component in the battery, cell makers wouldn’t have to make any major changes to their production processes.
The anode is the key battery component that stores lithium when the battery is charging. Its opposite, the cathode, stores lithium when the battery is discharging. The lithium travels back and forth between charging and discharging through the electrolyte, but something called a separator keeps them from shorting out.
By replacing graphite with silicon, Sila’s current products have a 20 to 25 percent increase in energy density, Berdichevsky says.
“And in the future, we expect the energy density to increase by up to about 40 percent without changing anything else in the battery,” he said.
In a statement, Silla noted that upcoming releases of Titan Silicon will cut charging times to under 10 minutes and lower battery costs.
Sila has been offering Titan Silicon to automotive customers from its headquarters in Alameda, California, for many years, but only to the extent of bringing the technology to test vehicles.
The Moses Lake plant will enable the mass-production scale and manufacturing standards for vehicles, Berdichevsky said. From there, automakers will need to do final validation qualification of Sira’s battery technology before deploying it at scale in production vehicles. For example, Sira’s technology will be used in Mercedes’ electric G-Wagon, which recently launched in Beijing.
Beyond Mercedes, Sirra has publicly announced plans to provide battery technology to Panasonic, which makes EV batteries for a variety of automakers, including Tesla Inc. Sirra, which will make its commercial debut with its Whoop wearable in 2021, plans to announce other automotive and consumer electronics customers in the future.
Berdichevsky said the Moses Lake facility has the capacity to serve more than 1 million vehicles with future expansion.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated when the Sila’s technology would be available in the Mercedes G-Wagon.
