Electric generator startup Moxion Power officially filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Aug. 12 after it had shut down and laid off hundreds of workers at the end of July.
The Richmond-based company had more than $118 million worth of total assets and nearly $87 million in total liabilities, the bankruptcy filing shows. Of those outstanding liabilities, Moxion listed 324 non-priority unsecured creditors that have total claims worth close to $53.5 million.
Silicon Valley Bank, which is now a division of First Citizen's Bank and Trust, has the largest claim as Moxion's only creditor with a secured claim, which is worth more than $33 million.
Moxion received more than $3 million in total tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act across 2023 and 2024, and it also received another unspecified research and development tax credit of over $98,000, the filing shows. The company posted a $28 million net operating loss in 2022, more than $116 million in gross revenue in 2023 and more than $19 million in gross revenue in 2024 before it filed for bankruptcy.
Its largest single category of assets was for unspecified "inventory" that was worth over $51 million, followed by "machinery, equipment and vehicles" worth over $31 million and "other assets" worth about $31 million, the filing shows. Among its inventory of "finished goods," Moxion reported 279 mobile power units priced between $129,000 and $141,000 each.
The bankruptcy filing also shows around $202,000 in cash and financial assets, in addition to six pending labor-related legal disputes including one alleged labor law violation and five worker's compensation claims.
Several of Moxion's co-founders and other executives are listed in the filing as unsecured creditors with priority claims. The co-founders listed are CEO Paul Huelskamp, Chief Technology Officer Alex Smith and President Alexander Meek, who have claims worth $34,850 each. In addition, Chief Operating Officer Josh Ensign has a claim worth $84,850, Andrew Noonan, the company's vice president of digital, according to LinkedIn, has one worth $24,850, John Huelskamp, the company's vice president of sales according to LinkedIn, has a claim worth $59,850, and Chief Financial Officer Eric Long has a priority claim worth $97,350, the filing shows.
Six of the executives were also paid close to $2.2 million in total gross pay in the year prior to Moxion's bankruptcy filing: Meek ($362,807), Ensign ($446,545), Smith ($313,141), Huelskamp ($363,220), Long ($439,420) and Head of Legal and Corporate Secretary Jason Parkin ($272,917).
Moxion had raised around $126 million since 2020, more than doubled its real estate footprint earlier this year with a nine-year lease for more than 100,000 square feet of space at Ford Point in Richmond, and was also planning a 200,000 square foot "gigafactory" to produce its all-electric power generators.
The company laid off around 350 employees this year including 101 jobs that were cut in June and the remaining staff were cut in July when Moxion shut down.
At least one employee has sued for unpaid severance and WARN notice violations.
"It didn't seem surprising that we didn't close a new round … this is a company that had a product that was technically better than anything else on the market … the most energy-dense storage system,” a former employee previously told me, “but that confidence in the product led to some missteps in assessing the strategy."
South Carolina-based Sunbelt Rentals, which provides heavy equipment and tool rentals, had signed a multiyear deal with Moxion to buy its generators through 2025.
Sunbelt was also an investor and participated in Moxion's $100 million Series B round which closed in 2022 and valued Moxion at $500 million. Other investors in that round included Tamarack Global, the Climate Pledge, Marubeni Ventures, Enterprise Holdings Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Suffolk Technologies, 13Capital, Rocketship.vc, Nugen Capital Management and Microsoft Climate Fund.
Amazon Studios was also testing out Moxion's battery-powered generators on some productions, the Hollywood Reporter wrote last year.
