Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the fund launched by bigwigs including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Jack Ma, invested in its second Boston-area startup.
Malta Inc, which started as 'Project Malta' at Alphabet's under-the-radar research and development company X, The Moonshot Factory and later incorporated as Malta Inc announced that it secured $26 million in a Series A round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from other investors including Concord New Energy Group and Alfa Laval.
Malta Inc works on storing renewable energy in molten salts. According to the X website, "Malta is building a grid-scale energy storage technology that stores electricity from renewable energy sources as heat inside large tanks of high-temperature molten salt and as cold in large tanks of chilled liquid."
This energy storage system can store electricity for long periods of time (think weeks) and release it back to the grid when demand is high.
"A lack of affordable, reliable grid-scale energy storage is currently limiting the shift to renewable energy. Malta's technology gives us a shot at storing all the renewable energy we create cheaply and reliably. With X having done our part to bring Malta's technology as far as we can take it, we're excited to hand the baton to the Malta team for the next phase of product development and deployment," said Raj Apte, PhD, Science Adviser at X, the Moonshot Factory in a statement.
This is Breakthrough Energy Ventures' second investment in a Boston-area startup after Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup that's building a compact fusion reactor. The fund which wants to invest in a "carbonless future," is pouring money into energy innovation companies at a time when nuclear energy startups are attracting increased attention. While Malta Inc and CFS promise to usher in the next wave of energy innovation, an eleven-year-old nuclear fission startup, Transatomic Power Systems shut down in October this year.
