Mitra Chem, a Mountain View, CA-based innovator in production of lithium-ion battery materials, raised $60M in Series B funding.
The round was led by General Motors (NYSE: GM) with participation from Social Capital, Fontinalis Partners, Earthshot Ventures, The Keffi Group, Boutique Venture Partners, and new investors such as GS Futures, Bricks Capital Management, Zeon Ventures, Scribble VC, WovenEarth Ventures, Bonds Investment Group, and others. As part of the partnership with GM, Mitra Chem will develop iron-based cathode active materials (CAM) like lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) to power EV batteries compatible with GM’s EV propulsion architecture, the Ultium Platform.
The company intends to use the funds to scale its current R&D and pilot operations to expedite bringing their battery materials to market.
Led by CEO Vivas Kumar, Mitra Chem has been at the forefront of battery technology research, focusing on developing sustainable and high-performance energy storage solutions. Their battery R&D facility can synthesize and test thousands of cathode designs monthly, ranging in size from grams to kilograms – these processes drive shortened learning cycles, enabling shorter time to market for new battery cell formulas.
An “atoms-to-tons acceleration platform” empowers Mitra Chem’s lab, using simulations and physics-informed machine learning models to accelerate formulation discovery, cathode synthesis optimization, cell-lifetime evaluation and process scale-up. The in-house cloud platform, purpose-built for battery cathode development, automates data ingestion across diverse synthesis, material characterization, cell prototyping and standardized analyses and visualizations.
Its first product category is iron-based cathodes for Western battery applications.
FinSMEs
16/08/2023