Anzu leads $25M round for AMB with TDK, Toyota, and others
6K awarded $50M grant from Dept of Energy
OTI raises $55M round inc. Samsung, LG, UDC, and others
Anzu participates in $25M round for med device cybersecurity with J&J, Intuitive, and others
Hi everyone,
I’m Josh Stiling, an Investor at Anzu Partners. I’m here today with one of our partners, Jimmy Kan, to introduce our newest Fund III investment, AM Batteries (AMB). AM Batteries is a Boston-based, innovative manufacturing company developing a next-generation, lower carbon footprint and lower cost dry-electrode manufacturing technology for lithium-ion batteries. AMB’s dry process is an enabling manufacturing platform compatible with current Li-ion chemistries as well as newer chemistries and form factors such as solid state and layered electrodes that we believe are unachievable by conventional “wet-coating” technology.
With its recent $25M financing, AMB is accelerating is technology development and launching industry partnerships.
AMB's dry process (shown above for a single battery electrode particle) electrostatically charges and sprays battery material onto a current collector metal foil.
AMB addresses major fundamental challenges in Li-ion battery manufacturing: cost and CO2 footprint.
The electrification and the electric vehicle transition is driving significant growth in the battery industry. Cell manufacturers such as Samsung, CATL, LG Energy Solutions, and others are competing aggressively on price ($/kWh) and quality. AMB’s technology reduces energy consumption and CO2 emissions from battery manufacturing (targeting ~50% reduction), manufacturing capex (targeting ~40% reduction), and factory footprint dedicated to electrode manufacturing (targeting 10x reduction). The industry has already shown a desire to capture these kinds of benefits, and in 2019, Tesla acquired Maxwell Technologies, a company known for a competitive, 1st-generation dry-electrode coating technology company.
We are excited about AMB’s dry coating technology that removes the need for toxic solvents.
To manufacture battery electrodes, AMB uses an electrostatic spray deposition technique by which the cathode and anode active materials in a battery are electrostatically charged then deposited onto metal foil current collectors, which are then processed to their final state. With the additional customizability afforded by this type of dry process, AMB’s electrodes also offer a path to other benefits such as faster-charging, higher energy density, and even safer batteries.
AMB has attracted significant interest due to its prototype manufacturing line’s differentiated capability to produce high-quality sample electrode materials.
AMB’s existing prototype manufacturing line has demonstrated promising results, producing high quality battery electrodes. As one of the leading players in dry-electrode processing, AMB has established significant interest and engagement from an ecosystem of customers such as large auto OEMs, cell manufacturers, and material suppliers. AMB is currently sampling to a variety of customers and has established joint-development agreements with these partners to advance their understanding of application-specific requirements and continue to optimize the manufacturing process.
The team is led by repeat founder, Dr. Yan Wang, who is a leading expert in battery manufacturing.
Anzu is excited to be working alongside Dr. Yan Wang, the William Smith Foundation Dean's Professor of Mechanical Engineering at WPI and founder of Ascend Elements. Ascend Elements is one of the leading battery recycling companies in the US and has been named as the recipient of ~$480M in recent Department of Energy funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The AMB team has demonstrated progress since their Seed funding in 2021 and was derived from Dr. Yan Wang and Dr. Heng Pan’s research on dry fabrication of Li-ion electrodes.
Dr. Yan Wang, Co-Founder and CEO, AM Batteries
We are thrilled to welcome AM Batteries to the Anzu portfolio and are looking forward to working alongside the company to commercialize AMB’s dry electrode fabrication technology. Jimmy Kan will be joining AMB’s Board of Directors with Josh Stiling as a Board Observer.
Sincerely,
Josh Stiling and Jimmy Kan
Update from Anzu's Talent Team
I’m Wendy Papakostandini, Director of Talent at Anzu Partners. Our Talent team is our portfolio companies’ go-to resource as they scale from Seed and Series A to beyond. We work to recruit top technical talent efficiently. As recruiting is always a long game, we have been hard at work over the past five years connecting with students early and matching them with door-opening and career-launching opportunities within our ecosystem.
Since starting our internship program in 2015, our admissions and classes have become increasingly competitive and more diverse technically and demographically. A couple of quick stats:
We’ve employed 61 interns in our summer programs – 26 Rhodes, Marshall, and Goldwater Scholars; 20 Masters, 17 PhDs, and 12 MBAs.
Majors and areas of expertise span across 18 fields in the industrial and life sciences.
Summer 2022 was our most demographically diverse class yet, with 79% of the class being individuals who identify in one or more of these categories: Female, Underrepresented Minority, or LGBTQ+.
8 former summer interns have become full time employees of Anzu.
We also put a great deal of time and effort into our career fair program, mainly targeting recruits for our portfolio companies, for whom the expense, travel, and time of a career fair run would be individually untenable. In September, the Anzu Talent team met with 200+ Engineering (Industrial, Chemical, Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical) and Science (Computer, Data, Chemistry, Biology) students who are interested in an internship or full-time work at our startups. Each year, we choose top ranked schools that value opportunities for diverse or underprivileged students. We believe that this mix of schools will put us in touch with the types of students that would excel in our companies. This year, Anzu Talent attended career fairs at the following top engineering and science schools:
Georgia Tech – Awards more engineering degrees to women and underrepresented minority students than any other school nationally.
University of California San Diego – Top Pell Grant-awardee enrollment and graduation school; about one-third of students receive a Pell Grant and/or are the first in their family to attend college.
Purdue – Engineering school files about 400 patent applications each year; top school for Native Americans in STEM.
Carnegie Mellon – Over 50% of students in the 2021 class were female; and ~15% Pell Grant recipients.
MIT – U.S. News & World Report has given the top spot to MIT’s undergraduate engineering program since 1983; its Pell share is ~18%.
We would appreciate any further connections you can help us make, especially with underrepresented students. Send resumes or ideas over to talent@anzupartners.com and we’ll take the next steps.
Thank you,
Wendy
PORTFOLIO COMPANY UPDATES
6K Awarded Prestigious Department of Energy Grant to Fund $107M UniMelt Plasma Processing Plant for Domestic Battery Material Production
6K, a leader in the sustainable production of engineered materials for lithium-ion batteries and additive manufacturing, produced from its UniMelt® plasma technology, announced that it has been selected as a recipient of the first set of projects funded by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and the electrical grid and for materials and components currently imported from other countries. The $107 million project, of which $50 million will be funded through federal share from the Department of Energy, to accelerate deployment costs for battery material production associated with 6K’s investment in a full-scale battery material manufacturing plant to be built in the southeast United States.
6K plans to demonstrate the ability to domestically produce multiple battery chemistries, namely NMC811 and LFP, in a plant with the capacity of 3,000 tpa ready for production in 2025 and scaling to 10,000 tpa in 2026. As an example, the demonstration plant will sustainably produce NMC811, generating zero waste and 70% less greenhouse gases while using only 10% of the water and 30% of the energy that traditional battery material production methods use
OTI Lumionics Raised $55 Million in Series B Funding and Completed Customer Mass Production Qualification of its Display Materials
OTI Lumionics, a leader in the development of production-ready advanced materials for consumer electronics, announced an oversubscribed $55 million USD Series B financing from LG Technology Ventures, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, UDC Ventures, Anzu Partners, and The Family Office of Lee Lau. The new funding will accelerate the adoption of OTI’s display materials by multiple leading display manufacturers that supply all major smartphone, tablet, laptop, AR/VR headset and TV brands.
The company’s display materials were designed using a proprietary quantum and AI-driven computational platform that incorporates closed-loop feedback from in-house automated pilot production testing and application engineering. The end-to-end product development capabilities of OTI allow new materials to be designed to fit existing production processes rather than having customers significantly alter their production processes and equipment to fit a new set of materials.
MedCrypt will use these funds to scale their cryptography, behavior monitoring, and vulnerability inventory products across various types of medical devices, from small devices like glucose monitors to hospital-based surgical robots. The funds will also be used to expand MedCrypt's engineering team to support the market's exponential increase in demand for medical device cybersecurity products and services.
Anzu is excited to welcome MedCrypt to our portfolio! You can learn more about the company and this funding round in this TechCrunch piece or in the press release.
e-Zinc Closed a $7 Million Venture Debt Facility with Silicon Valley Bank
e-Zinc, the company enabling sustainable, long-duration energy storage with its zinc-air battery, announced that it has closed a USD $7 million venture debt facility with Silicon Valley Bank. e-Zinc will use the funding to further progress its commercialization efforts and execute on high-value commercial pilot projects that provide in-field validation for its batteries.
Following e-Zinc’s recent Series A funding, this venture debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank will provide a flexible and discretionary financial buffer to expand manufacturing operations at its new facility in Mississauga, Ontario. By accelerating production of its commercial energy storage systems, e-Zinc can now deliver on upcoming testing and validation projects within the next ~18 months, such as the Toyota Tsusho Canada Inc. pilot project and its partnership with California Energy Commission (CEC).
GelSight, a pioneer in tactile intelligence technology, was featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Jackie Snow on the importance of giving robots a more human-like sense of touch.
The article explores why even though the field of robotics has advanced quickly, and robots are being implemented in all types of situations, giving them a sense of touch is a complex challenge. Ted Adelson, a professor of vision science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and co-founder and advisor to GelSight, was interviewed for the piece and he explains how the GelSight technology works and could help give robots a more sensitive sense of touch to handle more complex tasks.
BioSkryb Genomics and Cooper Surgical Inked Multi-Year Deal to Accelerate Clinical Discovery and Diagnostics in Women’s Reproductive Health
BioSkryb Genomics, a pioneer in developing scientifically advanced single-cell analysis molecular tools, announced a multi-year agreement with Cooper Genomics, a leader in the reproductive health market, to license BioSkryb’s proprietary genomic amplification technology. Cooper Genomics will utilize the BioSkryb technology to enhance their preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) capabilities. The agreement will also permit Cooper Genomics to market and distribute the BioSkryb technology for the PGT and women’s reproductive health market globally.
The newly announced deal will provide Cooper Genomics with BioSkryb’s ResolveDNATM single-cell genomic amplification technology, enabling researchers and clinicians to unlock deeper insights into the genome to evaluate embryonic viability.ResolveDNA incorporates proprietary Primary Template-directed Amplification (PTA) technology. PTA employs controlled reaction parameters, allowing uniform amplification of >95% of the genomes of single cells across multiple clinical and research applications – even in low input samples – with market leading precision and sensitivity. This approach results in high quality analyses available today for single-cell genomics across many disciplines including, but not limited to, oncology, neurology, cell and gene, cardiovascular, microbiome, and reproductive health.
InterVenn Appointed Erwin Estigarribia as President and Chief Operating Officer and Expanded Board of Directors
InterVenn Biosciences, a clinical technology company leveraging glycoproteomics to transform the future of healthcare, announced that Erwin Estigarribia has been appointed President and Chief Operating Officer, effective immediately. Prior to his appointment, Estigarribia was InterVenn’s Chief Operating Officer, where he was instrumental in leading the company’s lab operations and product development efforts. Estigarribia was also recently named one of the Top 25 Health Tech COOs, as reported by Becker’s Hospital Review.
The news was covered by 360Dx, BioWorld and several other publications. You can learn more about his background in the press release.
Earlier in October, InterVenn also announced the appointment of Jason Myers, Ph.D., and Carol Berry to the company’s Board of Directors. Dr. Myers brings to the board over 20 years of industry and research experience in commercializing innovative genomic tools and diagnostics. Ms. Berry joins the board with more than 25 years of industry experience in personalized medicine and diagnostics.
Dr. Myers has spent his career focused on innovations that remove disparity and allow mass adoption of cutting-edge products. He currently serves as CEO of Sequencing Health, an electronic detection platform capable of applications in DNA sequencing, for example, where he also serves on the Board of Directors. Ms. Berry currently serves as the Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer at CellCarta (formerly Caprion Bioscience Inc.), a specialized CRO laboratory focused on personalized medicine. Prior to joining CellCarta, she served as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the genomics services division at Asuragen, a molecular diagnostics company.
Xendee Microgrid Design Platform Added New Feature to Help Engineers Take Advantage of Inflation Reduction Act Incentives
Xendee, a provider of renewable project and microgrid design and decision support software, launched a series of new features that integrate the latest tax incentives from the new Inflation Reduction Act directly into its platform. These features allow engineers to quickly integrate the benefits of these policies with their projects and see the effects on overall costs or determine the capabilities associated with increased expenditure.
Anzu Partners Named to Inc.’s 2022 List of Founder-Friendly Investors
We are proud to be named to Inc.’s 2022 List of Founder Friendly Investors for a second consecutive year. The annual list honors the private equity and venture capital firms with the best track records of success backing entrepreneurs.
The final list recognized 184 firms that entrepreneurs collaborate with and trust as they receive the financial support they need to help drive growth.
“We are delighted to be named to the Inc. Founder Friendly List for the second year in a row, as it validates the level of support and guidance we provide to founders growing their businesses,” said Whitney Haring-Smith, managing partner at Anzu Partners in the press release. “Our team understands the challenges faced by early-stage deep tech companies and has both the technical knowledge and business expertise to support the founders from inception to IPO.”
The Inc. Top Founder Friendly Investors of 2022 list was published in October 2022 and was based on the period of April 2021 to April 2022. Anzu Partners paid an application fee to be considered for inclusion on the list.
ADDITIONAL PC MEDIA COVERAGE
e-Zinc CEO James Larsen was named to Canada's 2023 Clean50 in the research and development category
Xendee was featured in a Microgrid Knowledge piece on the use of microgrids in Puerto Rico and the Xendee team also contributed a piece on the impact of project financing in sustainable energy projects in CleanTechnica
Voltaiq's CTO and Co-Founder, Eli Leland wrote a blog post on looking for talent in the battery industry
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
Anzu Partners and our portfolio companies are hiring!
Browse the open roles here and learn more about joining our amazing teams.
To stay up to date on the latest news from both Anzu and our portfolio companies, follow us on social media.
ABOUT ANZU PARTNERS
Anzu Partners is an investment firm that focuses on industrial and life science technology companies with the potential to transform their industries. Anzu works with entrepreneurs to develop and commercialize technological innovations by providing capital alongside deep expertise in business development, market positioning, IP, global connectivity, and operations. For more information, please visit https://anzupartners.com/.
The information contained in this newsletter is being provided by Anzu Partners for informational purposes only. The information was obtained from various sources, but Anzu Partners cannot assure its accuracy. This is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation for an offer to buy an interest in any fund managed by Anzu Partners. Any such offer or solicitation will only be made to qualified potential investors pursuant to a private placement memorandum. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss.
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