Using scrap silicon as its feedstock, a New Orleans-based company called Advano has raised $18.5 million to manufacture battery components to enable more powerful, smaller and longer-lasting batteries.
The technology was innovative enough to earn the Louisiana-based startup a place in Y Combinator’s famed accelerator and has now attracted the attention of Mitsui Kinzoku, which is investing in the company as a strategic partner, and Tony Fadell, the famous product designer known as “the father of the iPod” and the founder of the smart thermostat company, Nest .
Alongside Mitsui’s SBI Material Innovation Fund, Fadell’s investment firm Future Shape, along with PeopleFund, Thiel Capital, Data Collective and Y Combinator, are investing $18.5 million in new financing to develop Advanos manufacturing capacity and take its silicon anode material to market.
(Read the full article on TechCrunch)