An energy startup that has a sizable presence in Austin has raised a new investment round that could help it and its partners unlock a vast lithium supply chain in North America.
EnergyX said April 11 that it secured $50 million in series B funding from GM Ventures, the venture capital arm of General Motors Co. It follows two other big funding rounds in the past few years and is part of a new partnership with GM (NYSE: GM) to develop new sources of lithium for electric vehicle batteries.
As part of their agreement, the companies will launch a development program to commercialize EnergyX's technology and refinery processes at locations in North and South America — and give GM exclusive rights to use the lithium in EV production, a critical supply chain bottleneck in the growing sector.
EnergyX, founded in 2018 and operating legally as Energy Exploration Technologies Inc., has developed a new way of extracting lithium from brine. It frames that process, called direct lithium extraction or DLE, as a more efficient and sustainable way to obtain lithium metal. Traditionally, lithium is mined from hard rock ore, brine deposits and clay. That usually involves drilling into rock or deep wells leading to brine deposits and pumping that to the surface in a large evaporation pond where it concentrates as lithium salt, which is later processed into lithium carbonate.
The technology has the potential to make use of large stores of lithium in North America that may not have been accessible otherwise.
"The EnergyX team of scientists and engineers have worked relentlessly for five years developing cutting-edge DLE technology to solve the immense bottlenecks that have limited global lithium production and supply chain," EnergyX founder and CEO Teague Egan stated. "This single bottleneck (a massive lithium shortage) is the biggest challenge to scaling EV production. We will unlock lithium supply in the U.S., a pivotal move in expanding the EV industry."
Other companies pursuing lithium extraction from brine include International Battery Metals and Standard Lithium.
EnergyX has developed a pilot plant in what's known as the "lithium triangle," a region in central South America that holds around 65% of the known lithium reserves on Earth.
EnergyX is headquartered in in Puerto Rico but it has a 40,000-square-foot innovation and manufacturing facility in Austin. The company has around 50 employees currently, spread across offices in Austin, Puerto Rico and South America.
With the new funding, it plans to hire around 50 more employees in coming months.
In August, EnergyX secured a $450 million commitment from private equity firm Global Emerging Markets. At the time, the company said it would decide how much of that capital it needed and when. It also said it had plans to go public by the end of 2024.
Prior to that, the startup in 2020 raised $20 million in funding from Obsidian Acquisition Partners, Helios Capital and the University of Texas.
