Amid a crowded environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to complete construction of a US factory that will scale up next-generation battery technology for customers such as Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic by the end of 2025.
Sila, formerly known as Sila Nanotechnologies, is set to complete construction of its Moses Lake, Washington plant in the first quarter of next year, where the company will begin mass production of its Titan silicon anode material.
The full Series G round — led by existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Coatue, Perry Creek Capital and others — comes as other EV battery companies struggle to bring products to market and stay afloat.
Earlier this year, Ionic Shutter Materials its doors and Umicore cut its guidance to a projected decline in EV sales. Freyr Battery, a startup that joined the public markets in 2021 by merging with a special purpose buyout company, it also has failed to ramp up production of the next-generation battery.
“It’s obviously a very tough market out there for late-stage growth, anything high-cap and anything with EVs,” Sila founder and CEO Gene Berdichevsky told TechCrunch. “But we have a great technology, we’re scaling, we’re on track with our factory, and that helps us get cars on the road, which is really the milestone that everyone in the world wants to see.”
Sila’s ability to make such a large round in a challenging environment could be seen as a vote of confidence in the company’s approach to battery chemistry and its ability to scale production. Berdichevsky, who was Tesla’s seventh employee before founding Sila in 2011, has told TechCrunch in the past that it’s not enough to get the science right if you can’t do it in a way that’s essentially scalable.
That’s especially true in a world where hundreds of thousands of EVs are expected to hit the market in the coming 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 the anode of a lithium-ion battery with silicon, a material that can be produced anywhere rather than mined and processed in specific regions. Using silicon allows for a more local supply chain for critical battery materials and also creates a denser, cheaper battery cell that can help EVs charge faster, Berdichevsky says. And by disabling just one component of the battery, cell makers don’t have to drastically change their production processes.
The anode is a key battery component that stores lithium when a battery is being charged. Its counterpart, the cathode, stores lithium when the battery is discharged. The lithium moves back and forth between charging and discharging through a liquid electrolyte, and something called a separator keeps them from shorting.
Berdichevsky says that by replacing graphite with silicon, Sila’s products today have a 20% to 25% increase in energy density.
“And in the future, we see about a 40% increase in energy density without changing anything else in the battery,” he said.
In a statement, Sila noted that future versions of the Titan Silicon will also drive recharge times to less than 10 minutes and reduce battery costs.
Sila has been delivering Titan Silicon to automotive customers for years from its headquarters in Alameda, California, but only long enough to bring the technology to vehicle testing.
The Moses Lake facility allows for a scale and manufacturing standard for the car production line, Berdichevsky says. Beyond that, automakers still need to do final validation certification before they can transfer Sila’s battery technology to mass-production cars. Sila’s technology, for example, is to be used in Mercedes’ electric G-Wagon, which was recently launched in Beijing.
In addition to Mercedes, Sila has publicly announced plans to hand over its battery technology to Panasonic, which makes EV batteries for a number of automakers, most notably Tesla. Sila, which made its commercial debut in 2021 with Whoop wearable devices, plans to announce other automotive and consumer electronics customers in the future.
Berdichevsky says the Moses Lake facility is large enough that, with future expansions, it could expand to more than a million vehicles worth of Titan Silicon.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated when Sila technology would be available on the Mercedes G-Wagon.
