A Triad startup has landed the expertise of a heavy hitter.
Soelect, a lithium battery component startup located on the boundary of Greensboro and High Point in Piedmont Centre corporate park, has appointed former U.S. Senator Richard Burr as a senior adviser.
“I am very pleased to have Richard Burr join our efforts at Soelect as we look to grow our ability to provide efficient and reliable fast-charging and high-energy lithium metal battery technology to our global customer base,” said Sung-Jin Cho, founder and CEO of Soelect.
“Burr understands the globally competitive nature of our industry and the critical nature of domestic leadership. We welcome his guidance to Soelect as we work to bring good-paying and globally competitive jobs to our region.”
Founded in 2018, Soelect develops solid-state battery components for a variety of energy storage uses, such as electric vehicles and portable electronics, helping to make batteries more efficient, more powerful and less expensive. The company was on a hot streak last year – raising over $11 million in a Series A fundraise and signing into a potential $204 million joint venture – that landed it on TBJ’s Inno Fire list.
“Soelect is a great example of how a North Carolina-based company can advance innovation and entrepreneurship,” Burr said. “Their technology has numerous applications in electric battery platforms, and I look forward to working with the company on a number of fronts.”
Earlier this year, Burr joined the global law and lobbying firm DLA Piper as a principal policy adviser and chair of the Health Policy Strategic Consulting Practice in the firm’s Regulatory and Government Affairs group.
A Winston-Salem native and graduate of Wake Forest University and the Wake Forest University School of Law, Burr was first elected to Congress in 1994 and served as the representative for North Carolina’s 5th Congressional district for 10 years. The district serves parts of the Triad including Winston-Salem, other areas of Forsyth County, Stokes County, Surry County and Yadkin County.
From 2005 until earlier this year, Burr represented the state in the Senate. While a senator, Burr served as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and also served on the Committee on Finance and Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Soelect looks to utilize Burr’s experience
With Burr as a senior adviser, Soelect will look to build on the momentum in gained in 2022 in advancing its technology and customer base.
“Sen. Burr will help Soelect to raise more capital from private and/or public [organizations] and also to connect more customers with the company’s vision,” Cho said. “Sen. Burr is absolutely the person to understand how to support a small company in high-tech industries because he spent over 28 years in Congress and Senate and experienced many different high-tech companies as a chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”
In February of last year, Soelect raised $11 million in Series A funding from Lotte Ventures, a fund sponsored by Lotte Chemical; General Motors Ventures, a venture capital fund from General Motors; and KTB Network, a Korean venture capital firm. The company has also received seed funding from local firms such as VentureSouth and First Launch Capital Fund.
The company went on to sign a $204 million memorandum of understanding with Lotte Chemical, a leading Korean chemical maker, in April 2022 in a joint venture to create a lithium metal anode manufacturing facility in the United States.
Cho told TBJ last July that nothing had been decided on the joint venture with Lotte Chemical, although plans called for a manufacturing facility in North Carolina, contingent on federal support, and that still appears to be the case.
“Because of the capital market, we plan to conduct all manufacturing plans step by step and haven’t decided yet to build a joint venture,” Cho told TBJ yesterday. “We are still under discussion and haven’t finalized what we can do and when. We are looking for growth and hopefully it should be in North Carolina, but we haven’t decided yet.”
Right now, Soelect is targeting completion of its first 200Mwh (megawatt hour) pilot line in the second quarter, Cho said. A measurement of electric output, a megawatt hour is equal to 1,000 kilowatts of electricity generated per hour.
Cho added that Soelect’s product is already on the market for a number of customers at a small scale. Completion of the pilot line will help accelerate connections with more customers, he said.
The company currently employs 22 people full-time. Cho said that five additional full-time employees are joining in May and the company is hiring for more than 10 other full-time positions.
