Palo Alto, California-based OneD Battery Sciences has hit a major milestone in Moses Lake.
On Monday, OneD announced the completion and commission of two 12,500-square-foot pilot manufacturing plants in the central Washington town. It's the latest development amid a boom for Moses Lake, which has been attracting big names in battery technology with its cheap electrical power and strong industrial talent.
"We are now scheduling visits to our Moses Lake plant with customers and partners and collecting data to showcase the key metrics," OneD co-founder and CEO Vincent Pluvinage said in a news release.
OneD broke ground in October of last year. Pluvinage previously told the Business Journal the plan was to be up and running in early 2023.
OneD, founded in 2013, adds silicon to anode battery cells with the aim of increasing energy density for electric vehicle batteries. The company says it does this by fusing silicon nanowires to the graphite found in batteries, making EV batteries cheaper, longer lasting and faster charging.
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OneD works with graphite material from existing EV suppliers to make the process easier for battery cell makers. The company raised a $25 million Series C round in 2022, but increased the total to $45 million in June of last year. OneD is planning to raise another round either later this year or early next year, likely between $50 million and $100 million, according to the release.
The Moses Lake plants will serve as qualifiers to test production. OneD has already made some initial hires. Pluvinage previously told the Business Journal the company plans to hire 20 people in Moses Lake to start.
Dahlgren Industrial served as the contractor for the project. Other partners included Advanced Material Solutions, Meier Architecture and Engineering, and Royal HaskoningDHV.
Multiple well-funded battery tech companies are descending on Moses Lake. Woodinville-based Group14, which raised a $614 million Series C round in 2022 and $100 million from the Department of Energy, plans to finish building its 1 million-square-foot factory campus in Moses Lake later this year. It will house two manufacturing modules to start that will each produce 2,000 tons of Group14's battery powder per year, but Group14 plans to have at least six modules there eventually.
Alameda, California-based Sila, which raised $375 million in June, plans to finish its Moses Lake factory in the first quarter of 2025.
Moses Lake is also home to REC Silicon, a polysilicon producer for the solar industry that has a byproduct gas called silane, which is crucial to this new battery technology. REC closed its Moses Lake plant in 2019 amid a trade fight with China but in 2022 announced it was reopening the Moses Lake plant after a major investment from South Korean manufacturing company Hanwha Corp.
In its release, OneD called REC its "key silane supplier," adding that REC has inspected and approved OneD's bulk silane off-loading station.
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