Jointly led by Tata Limited (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons) and General Catalyst, a global venture capital firm, they were joined by New York-based Thrive Capital and Toronto-based Thomvest, as well as existing investor Drads Capital.
According to Alsym it will use the funds to grow its Boston-area team and expand its prototyping and pilot lines to address increasing demand for customer samples. The interest shown by investors highlights the growing interest in high-performance, inexpensive non-flammable battery technologies, according to Alsym.
Electricity generation is shifting to renewables, which are intermittent by nature and must be backed up by battery energy storage systems (BESS) at scale to ensure 24/7 availability as fossil-fuel plants go offline.
As a result, a variety of storage technologies are needed to address the different requirements of customers in terms of costs and performance. Alsym’s first product for this market, called Alsym Green, offers significantly higher system-level energy density than other non-flammable, non-lithium battery chemistries.
Products targeted to the marine, two-wheeler, three-wheeler, and passenger vehicle markets are planned to follow.
With the ability to operate at elevated temperatures, Alsym Green is a non-flammable option suitable for stationery and grid storage in situations where the risk of fire increases as temperatures rise. With industry-leading levelized cost of storage (LCOS) and the ability to support a wide, software configurable range of discharge durations, Alsym batteries can be used for short, medium, and long-duration storage applications without the need for multiple solutions.
“As the clean energy transition accelerates, it’s becoming more apparent that a single battery technology is not ideal for every use case, and that more options are needed to help address the challenges of a changing climate,” said Mukesh Chatter, CEO and Co-Founder of Alsym Energy. "This funding round represents a significant vote of confidence in our approach to developing new, non-flammable battery chemistries that combine high performance and low cost with a high level of safety. It gives us the ability to speed our pace of development, increase our capacity to provide samples to both existing and prospective customers, and ultimately get our first product to market as quickly as possible.”
“Battery storage systems can help provide firm capacity to the grid when the sun is not shining and wind is not blowing, but changing climates and hazardous environments demand flexible solutions that can meet a range of needs safely and economically,” said Dr. Kripa Varanasi, Co-Founder of Alsym Energy, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and thought leader in decarbonisation and sustainability. “Alsym batteries are suited to both temperate and warming climates, as well as infrastructure and industrial applications including datacentres, steel mills, and chemical plants. Our low-cost, non-toxic technology will help make decarbonisation economically feasible in the developed world as well as G-77 nations, allowing everyone to play a role in the clean energy future.”
"As we continue to see record scaling of renewable energy resources around the world, the practical constraints and supply chain uncertainties of lithium-ion batteries have become more acute, driving demand for alternatives that compete on performance, cost, and availability. This is particularly salient in emerging markets, where battery storage will be critical to driving down the cost of clean energy,” added Genevieve Kinney, partner at General Catalyst. “Alsym’s low-cost batteries combine performance and safety, and their strategic partnerships reflect one of the key pillars of our Global Resilience thesis, which relies on radical collaboration with established industry partners to scale new, critical technologies. With this partnership, we believe Alsym is well-positioned to drive a more sustainable future around the world."
