Common Motors is main a $60 million Sequence B financing spherical in Mitra Chem, a Silicon Valley-based, AI-enabled battery supplies innovator. The corporate’s AI-powered platform and superior analysis and improvement facility in Mountain View, California, will assist speed up GM’s commercialization of inexpensive electrical car batteries.
GM and Mitra Chem will develop superior iron-based cathode lively supplies (CAM), like lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP), to energy inexpensive and accessible EV batteries suitable with GM’s EV propulsion structure, the Ultium Platform. GM’s funding will assist Mitra Chem to scale its present operations and to expedite their novel battery supplies formulation to market.
“It is a strategic funding that may additional assist reinforce GM’s efforts in EV batteries, speed up our work on inexpensive battery chemistries like LMFP and help our efforts to construct a U.S.-focused battery provide chain,” stated Gil Golan, GM vp, Know-how Acceleration and Commercialization. “GM is accelerating bigger investments in essential subdomains of battery expertise, like cell chemistry, parts and superior cell manufacturing processes. Mitra Chem’s labs, strategies and expertise will match nicely with our personal R&D group’s work.”
Mitra Chem’s battery R&D facility can simulate, synthesize and take a look at hundreds of cathode designs month-to-month, ranging in measurement from grams to kilograms. These processes drive considerably shortened studying cycles, enabling shorter time to marketplace for new battery cell formulation.
An “atoms-to-tons acceleration platform” powers Mitra Chem’s lab, utilizing simulations and physics-informed machine studying fashions to speed up formulation discovery, cathode synthesis optimization, cell-lifetime analysis and course of scale-up. The in-house cloud platform, purpose-built for battery cathode improvement, automates knowledge ingestion throughout various synthesis, materials characterization, cell prototyping, and standardized analyses and visualizations.
“GM’s funding in Mitra Chem is not going to solely assist us develop inexpensive battery chemistries to be used in GM automobiles, but additionally will gasoline our mission to develop, deploy and commercialize U.S. made, iron-based cathode supplies that may energy EVs, grid-scale electrified vitality storage and past,” stated Mitra Chem CEO and Co-Founder Vivas Kumar.
Mitra Chem is constructing the primary North American lithium-ion battery supplies product firm that shortens the lab-to-production timeline by over 90%. Lithium-ion batteries are the important thing platform expertise enabling electrification in transportation, shopper electronics, together with residential, industrial, and grid-scale vitality storage. Mitra Chem’s first product class is iron-based cathodes for Western battery purposes. Iron-based cathodes shift away from the usage of parts equivalent to nickel and cobalt, that are going through imminent provide crunches. Mitra Chem takes cathode merchandise from lab to industrial scale quicker than the competitors by leveraging an in-house machine studying expertise benefit to dramatically shorten the R&D timeline. The corporate’s aim is to rework the cathode from a specialty chemical to a platform expertise that differentiates cell efficiency by finish utility.
Aug 17, 2023