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The Big One: NanoGraf to build $175M manufacturing plant in Michigan
NanoGraf is building its largest facility to-date.
The Chicago battery startup announced plans to expand to Flint, Michigan, last week on the heels of a $60 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, which supports commercial-scale domestic battery manufacturing projects.
NanoGraf will use the grant and its own capital to retrofit a former Buick City site in Flint and make it one of the largest battery material manufacturing sites outside of Asia.
"We wanted to still be in the Midwest, and our scale up is very much targeted towards electric vehicles, and it's hard to compete with what you know Michigan offers," NanoGraf CEO Francis Wang told Chicago Inno.
NanoGraf's strategy has always been to create a stable, sustainable company and establish a beachhead market before making the leap to the electric-vehicle market.
READ MORE: NanoGraf picks site outside Illinois for new manufacturing plant, $175M investment
Companies making headlines
- Startups often see landing a big corporate client as rocket fuel for growth. But amid the celebratory high-fives, a United Airlines senior exec working with tech startups advised caution.
- Famous Amos announced the winners of its entrepreneur program, which provides $150K in capital and resources to a group of Black early-stage entrepreneurs.
- Supply chain startup Caddi announced that Patrick Harrigan has been named vice president of partnerships. Harrigan will focus on bringing new digital transformation solutions to the manufacturing industry.
What to know about life sciences in Chicago
Chicago is expected to be a growth spot for life sciences in the coming years.
That's according to a new report from Cushman & Wakefield, which shows that Chicago's life-sciences ecosystem has seen unprecedented growth thanks in part to recent capital infusion and new development.
The report follows the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity's recently released five-year Economic Growth Plan revealing the state seeks long-term growth by focusing on five industries, including life sciences.
With vacancy rates continuing to increase for life sciences overall, in Chicago they rose to 20.5% in the first half of 2024 — above the 17.9% average among the markets measured in the report.
However, this trend is expected to start winding down as the life-sciences construction pipeline comes to market.
JetBlue partners with Chicago startup
JetBlue Airways Corp. signed a memorandum of understanding this week with Aether Fuels that will see the sustainable fuels maker with principal offices in Chicago and Singapore supply the New York-based airline with sustainable aviation fuel when commercial production begins.
Aether Fuels' Illinois research and development footprint began with a pilot facility at GTI's Des Plaines campus producing 1.5 gallons of sustainable aviation fuel per day, which will expand and move to 100 gallons per day. But that is just the beginning of the startup's plans as it hopes to develop a pipeline of commercial-scale production facilities across the globe.
Established in 2022 as a spinout of Xora Innovation, a Singapore-based early-stage deep-tech venture firm, Aether Fuels' technology can turn different waste carbon feedstocks into jet fuel. This helps with the limited, often-scarce or cost-constrained feedstocks that comes with SAF production processes.
READ MORE: JetBlue partners with Chicago startup Aether Fuels to develop sustainable aviation fuel
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