SPARKZ receives $2.6 million in funding from California Energy Commission
SPARKZ Inc., a battery start-up with exclusive licenses to produce domestic cobalt-free lithium batteries, has won a grant for $2.6 million from the California Energy Commission (CEC) to extend its development into solid-state batteries.
As noted in this February 2021 teknovation.biz post, the company has a strong relationship with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, having licensed at least six technologies from the Department of Energy (DOE) facility. Founder Sanjiv Malhotra is also a former DOE executive with big plans that could involve a manufacturing facility here.
According to this article from Green Car Congress, CEC funded the full amount possible for the first phase of the grant that SPARKZ sought to will help bridge the gap from its previous public funding awards to private investment. The CEC funding will help the start-up begin to engineer a solid-state, cobalt-free battery in the U.S.
SPARKZ will be announcing its private sector investors, customers and original equipment manufacturing partnerships in the near future as it prepares to begin commercialization of a cobalt-free, U.S.-made Lithium-ion battery, while continuing its research and development focused on re-engineering the rest of the battery supply chain.
