MatraVolt raises HK$30M angel round for carbon nanotube battery collectors
What's the deal? MatraVolt, a Hong Kong new-energy materials startup, has raised HK$30 million (roughly $3.8 million) in an angel round announced in August 2026. Investors include CAS StarDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, K2VC and BOC InternationalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with a post-money valuation reaching several hundred million Hong Kong dollars.
What's the endgame? The company develops carbon nanotube composite current collectors to replace the pure copper and aluminium foils used inside lithium batteries. It aims to deliver an ultra-thin, ultra-light, flexible material with strong conductivity, targeting power batteries, energy storage, and supercapacitors.
Who's behind it? MatraVolt was founded in May 2024 by Liu Zhenyu and Zheng Zijian, both Tsinghua undergraduates who later earned Cambridge PhDs and have known each other for nearly two decades. Its core technology comes from Zheng's team at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he serves as vice-president for knowledge transfer.
Why now? Current collectors are the last major lithium battery component still using pure metal foil, forcing the industry to keep thinning copper and aluminium to cut weight — a limit that strains strength, yield, and stability. MatraVolt swaps the plastic core of composite collectors for a macroscopic carbon nanotube film, keeping the weight savings while improving mechanical, thermal, and electrical performance.
By the numbers: The company claims its copper foil is 70% lighter and its collector 30% thinner than traditional versions, lifting energy density by more than 10%. At 10-million-square-metre capacity, it estimates product cost at 3 yuan per square metre, cutting collector material costs by about 2,000 yuan per electric vehicle.
What's the go-to-market? MatraVolt is skipping cell makers to sell directly to end customers, arguing that a larger customer base offers more niche applications. It has signed a memorandum with NIO on advanced composite collectors and is in talks with dozens of interested clients, targeting market revenue within a year.
The signal: The round reflects growing investor appetite for materials that break long-standing lithium battery bottlenecks, backed by Hong Kong's push to industrialise university research through its HK$10 billion "RAISe+" scheme. MatraVolt was among the programme's first projects, and its bet is that a commodity-like collector could become mainstream — with longer-term applications in solid-state batteries and even space.
Read more: 36Kr
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
