Now that battery tech company OneD Battery Sciences has opened two 12,500-square-foot pilot plants in Moses Lake, the Palo Alto, California-based is planning its next moves as it looks to expand to its presence.
Chief Operating Officer Jan-Marc Luchies said the company currently has about 15 employees in the central Washington town, but will likely double that number over the next year. OneD co-founder and CEO Vincent Pluvinage, meanwhile, said the company will look to raise its Series D in the first half of next year.
"The Series D financing is very different than it looks for some of our competitors," Pluvinage said. "We don't have to raise hundreds of millions. We're not building factories. We don't need a lot of cash because our burn rate is not high and because our business model is not expansive."
OneD, which has 37 total employees, said at the time the Moses Lake plants opened that the raise would likely be between $50 million and $100 million.
The 11-year-old company adds silicon to anode battery cells with the aim of increasing energy density for electric vehicle batteries. It does so by fusing silicon nanowires to the graphite found in batteries, with the aim of making EV batteries cheaper, longer lasting and faster charging.
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OneD works with graphite material from existing EV suppliers to maintain existing manufacturing infrastructure. Luchies and Pluvinage said OneD's Palo Alto facility serves as research and development, and the Moses Lake plants are to show the technology can be produced at a larger scale. The end goal, however, is to license the technology to third-party suppliers for the EV market.
OneD is already planning to license its technology in two large facilities owned and operated by industry partners. Pluvinage didn't disclose where specifically the facilities will be but said one will be in North America, and the other will be in Sweden.
Dahlgren Industrial served as the contractor for the project. Other partners included Advanced Material Solutions, Meier Architecture and Engineering, and Royal HaskoningDHV. OneD broke ground on the Moses Lake facilities in October. The company raised a $25 million Series C round in 2022, but increased the total to $45 million in June of last year.
Moses Lake is attracting multiple well-funded battery tech companies with its cheap electrical power and strong industrial talent. Woodinville-based Group14, which raised a $614 million Series C round in 2022 and secured $100 million from the Department of Energy, plans to finish building its 1 million-square-foot factory campus in Moses Lake later this year. Alameda, California-based Sila, which raised $375 million in June, plans to finish its Moses Lake factory in the first quarter of 2025.
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