Ex-Tesla exec's Holyvolt raises $45M to break China's battery grip
What's the deal? Holyvolt, a Stockholm-based battery-materials startup, has raised $45 million in an early-stage equity round to develop battery chemistries that China does not control. Fifth Wall, Zone II, CC.VC, and several angel investors from the defense and finance industries backed the round, which values the company at $245 million.
Who's behind it? Chief operating officer Steven Prast is a former Tesla manufacturing leader; founder and CEO Mathias Ingvarsson previously drove Tempur-PedicDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s international expansion and ran its European business for six years after the company's IPO.
What's the endgame? Holyvolt wants to "invent better materials and processes and make them in the West," Prast said, arguing there are "another dozen cathode materials that humanity just hasn't figured out yet." By his reckoning, lithium-ion technology is at best 20% through its maturity curve.
Why now? China makes about 85% of the world's cathode active material — which largely sets how much energy a battery stores and what it costs — and roughly 80% of battery cells. Its lead comes from scaling the two dominant chemistries, NMC and lithium iron phosphate (LFP).
Prast's view is that competing on those fronts is a losing game. "We will not be able to out-China China on the battlefield that China has defined," he said. "They're the world champions at being China."
How it works: Holyvolt's lab is Wildcat Discovery Technologies, a San Diego company it merged with in a $73 million deal in March. Over 18 years, Wildcat's high-throughput platform has run more than 225 projects for over 85 customers, including BMWDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and tested more than 500,000 cells.
That data is the asset. Holyvolt trains AI models on Wildcat's results and feeds them back into the lab, so each round of real-world tests sharpens the next prediction. Prast places the company in the camp that believes AI still needs a physical lab to verify its work: "We have to go to the lab and we have to go test."
The signal: The $45 million round ranks among the largest early-stage energy deals ever raised by a Swedish startup, a sign of how much Western capital is chasing alternatives to China's battery dominance — and betting that the next chemistry breakthrough comes from the lab, not just the model.
Read more: fortune.com
Image credit: U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command
