On Tuesday, Form Energy announced it had closed a $240 million Series D financing round, led by the decarbonization XCarb innovation fund of the global steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal. The industry is a little weary, I would say."ĭespite the company's early tendency to skirt the spotlight, it's had no trouble raising funds. "There's just a fraught history with battery startups over the last 15 years. And we've tried to tamp down anything other than what's necessary," he told CNBC at the time, speaking at the Tough Tech Summit in Boston, in the backyard of the company's headquarters in Somerville, Mass. "As you've maybe seen, there isn't a lot of press about us. In October 2019, CEO Mateo Jaramillo, a former Tesla vice president, noted his own reticence to speak with the media. Until recently, the company had been operating under the radar. Its first utility partner, Minnesota-based Great River Energy, describes their work together as a pilot project that could be an "important contribution to grid reliability and energy affordability should they achieve commercial success," a spokesperson says. In one of his blog posts, Bill Gates touted the importance of Form Energy's work, writing that it was "creating a new class of batteries that would provide long-duration storage at a lower cost than lithium ion batteries." One notable funder is Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which includes tech celebrities Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman and Richard Branson as investors. That's the market Form Energy is attempting to serve. There has to be a way to provide electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. In order for carbon emissions to hit net-zero by mid-century, meaning that the globe is absorbing as much greenhouse gases as are still being emitted, solar and wind capacity will need to quadruple and investments in renewable energy will need to triple by 2030, according to comments from United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.įor that to happen, there also must be a ramp up of long duration battery storage. By using these inexpensive materials, the company aims to have its batteries cost less than $20 per kilowatt-hour, which experts say is up to one-tenth the cost of the more common lithium-ion batteries in use today. The battery works with a process the company calls "reversible rusting," in which the battery charges and discharges by converting iron back and forth into rust.
Form Energy's core technology is based on three cheap and readily available materials: Iron, air, and water.
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