(Bloomberg) — General Motors Co. led a $108 million Series B funding round for Peak Energy to help ramp up manufacturing at the energy-storage startup’s California plant.
Peak is among the startups racing to boost manufacturing for grid-scale storage systems. The company says its sodium ion-based technology can tolerate higher operating temperatures than lithium-ion battery cells, offering cost and safety advantages that make it an attractive solution for data centers, grids and independent power producers.
Peak is expanding at a pivotal moment for sodium-ion batteries. Demand is forecast to reach 257 gigawatt-hours by 2035, up from just over 1 gigawatt-hour in 2025, by which time the technology may account for almost 10% of stationary storage
GM Ventures invested in Peak “because we believe it has significant potential in the energy-storage market as a safe, cost-effective solution using abundant, domestically sourced materials,” said GM Ventures President Kevin McCabe in a statement Wednesday.
The decision follows an announcement in June that the two companies are partnering to advance the technology in the US. GM is developing sodium-ion cells at its Michigan battery labs that Peak plans to later use in its energy-storage systems.
“You just want to catalyze this supply chain as much as possible,” said Landon Mossburg, Peak’s chief executive officer and co-founder. “It’s already catalyzed in China.”
Peak reports that it has about $1.1 billion in customer orders, most of that from a 4.75 gigawatt-hour agreement with Jupiter Power and a 1.5 gigawatt-hour deal with Energy Vault. Peak is also shipping small volumes from a pilot line in San Francisco, and Mossburg said the company expects to complete its first commercial facility in the first quarter, with battery systems rolling off the line shortly thereafter.
The market for sodium-ion cells remains far from mature, and they continue to be more expensive than lithium-ion alternatives. Both technologies also face the same trade pressures, with the bulk of manufacturing currently concentrated in China and other parts of Asia.
Still, sodium-ion offers an easier and cheaper path to domestic manufacturing Materials for the cells are readily available in the US and costs are expected to fall as the technology matures, he said
Lithium-ion batteries “are very cheap right now because they’re at a very high scale,” said Reichow, a partner at venture firm Eclipse Capital. “When you look at fundamental materials that are in sodium-ion and the actual costs that it takes to transform those materials, it will ultimately be lower cost.”
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