Battery maker
Infinite had raised $35.7 million in 2006 to build a thin-film battery manufacturing plant from
The manufacturing plant it started building two years ago is now up and running and Infinite says it will begin shipping its batteries to customers this month. Its batteries are ultra-thin and flexible, are easily recharged and do not leak energy as badly as existing products.
“If you look back two years ago, the venture world wouldn’t invest in manufacturing,” says Johnson. “Fortunately, we found people who understood that and embraced it at the time we were building a handful of devices in a pilot production line. To really get this technology commercially available, you have to have a manufacturing capacity to secure customers.”
And customers are only interested in a micro-power source than can scale. Bob Metcalfe, general partner at Polaris Venture Partners, says Infinite’s batteries might possible a wide array of new applications for the 10 billion embedded controllers produced each year that run RFIDs and wireless sensor networks. “Nobody wants to sample devices that you’ve handcrafted,” says Johnson. “Real customers want to see the stuff coming off the new high-volume line because that’s what they’re buying.”
Manufacturing is an important part of the battery business. Financing for production facilities has been difficult to come by. VCs have shied away from writing big checks and banks won’t offer debt until the technology is bullet-proof. Johnson says he is expecting that his next round of financing may come from a very different set of investors. “Fortunately for us, there are a lot of examples such as First Solar and others like them that have paved the way,” Johnson says.
VCs have ploughed more than $600 million into 27 new battery companies in recent years. Many of those investments have targeted lithium-ion innovations, perhaps the most ubiquitous battery type for high-performance devices, such as mobile phones, laptops and electric sports cars. Analysts at
Infinite has its competitors too. Cleveland-based
Other startups are working on new chemistries that may have better properties than conventional lithium-ion batteries for certain applications. Nickel-zinc battery maker
The eight-year-old, San Diego-based company’s Series D investment round came from
PowerGenix claims its nickel-zinc batteries are less toxic and store more power than nickel-cadmium batteries of the same size. The company is angling to get its batteries into power tools that use nickel-cadmium batteries and hybrid vehicles, which typically use nickel-metal hydride batteries.
Camarillo, Calif.-based
Swiss company