During a recent all-company call, Group14 co-founder and CEO Rick Luebbe told the hundreds of employees across three continents, “What we’re doing right now is not aspirational. We have the technology, the manufacturing, the infrastructure, and the capability to launch the silicon battery era today.”
Rick’s words belie the determination, hard work and passion the team has put forth since day one to truly reinvent the possibilities of energy storage. Our founding story details how we developed an advanced battery technology that transforms the many devices and vehicles that power our lives and scaled a manufacturing strategy that brings it to life – repeatedly and worldwide.
All Roads Lead to Silicon
From the early days, the problem was clear: Current industry-standard rechargeable batteries – the ones powering your phone, laptop and even your car – have been reliant upon the same technology for the last half-century. Now as the market is rife with the debut of new technologies daily, every device and vehicle from your school bus to your pacemaker to your regional aircraft all need better batteries to power increasingly complex applications.
Before the idea for Group14 germinated, our co-founders had been enmeshed in developing engineered carbon technologies for applications including ultracapacitors, lead-acid batteries and more at Seattle-based EnerG2. Co-founded by serial entrepreneur Rick Luebbe in 2003, EnerG2 developed industry leading solutions and technologies that proved the team could manufacture and scale material production in the US, leading to the company’s acquisition by multinational chemical giant BASF in 2016.
But not everything was easy. The hard lessons learned at EnerG2 shaped how Luebbe and then-head of R&D at EnerG2 Dr. Rick Costantino thought about the problems facing the energy storage industry – and inspired the technology and approach that Group14 leads today. In 2015, Luebbe and Costantino spun out Group14 to refine a silicon-carbon composite that later became our patented SCC55™ technology.
Liars, Damn Liars, and Battery Suppliers
To the naked eye, SCC55™ might look like nothing more than a fine black powder, but dropped into a rechargeable battery, it transforms a traditional lithium-ion battery into a silicon battery. Designed to be compatible with any cell format, SCC55™ enables batteries to charge in minutes instead of hours, while maintaining a very high energy density for thousands of cycles.
But perfecting the technology was just the beginning. Luebbe’s favorite saying in the battery industry describes it as such: “There are liars, damn liars, and battery suppliers,” recognizing how notoriously hard it is to scale in the battery industry and why we continue to see so many entrants to the market year over year.
Luebbe, Costantino and their team ran into those challenges early on. One of the most abundant elements on Earth, silicon is a compelling material for energy storage applications – readily available with 10x higher capacity compared to graphite, which powers current Li-ion batteries today. As the industry knows, silicon also proved to be a challenging material; for years, many companies tried – and failed – to harness silicon in batteries, struggling to find a solution to mitigate its propensity for volume expansion.
One of the biggest advantages in Group14’s favor was now-CTO Dr. Costantino. As a scientist who had built a name for himself in pharma before joining Luebbe at EnerG2, Dr. Costantino fostered an environment that prized creativity and ingenuity with the determination to do it right. The early minds at Group14 quickly uncovered the missing piece of the puzzle: engineered carbon, a technology they had mastered during their time at EnerG2.
For a month, more than a dozen early engineers at Group14 locked themselves in a small conference room, determined to unlock the methodology to effectively scale SCC55™. And this time proved prudent: A eureka moment four weeks later led to the realization that innovating their material technology and innovating their manufacturing process were complementary and cyclical. This moment initiated the beginning of our Applied Innovation methodology, an approach that has been instrumental in scaling Group14 to new heights.
Meeting Global Demand Today
What started as a small team diligently exploring new innovative approaches to transform the future of batteries, over time, grew into the manufacturing engine we are today. As we continue to build factories across North America, Europe and Asia, so does our global footprint grow: Today, our nearly 400 employees worldwide are collaborating across all three continents.
Driven by our mission to enable the electrification of everything, we are ready to meet the soaring demand for energy around the world. We are already in over a million smartphones and delivering SCC55™ to customers for the newest EVs, electronic devices and the future of flight as we know it. Representing 95% of the global lithium-ion battery market, our customers are exploring new possibilities for everything we do, touch and use today – and all other technologies that have yet to come.
As our CEO Rick Luebbe likes to say, “Our silicon battery technology is both a today – and tomorrow – technology.” While the team has been celebrating our successes to date, we’re also bracing for the next chapter, as demand for better battery technology continues to inflate globally across every imaginable industry. We know there’s plenty more for us to accomplish, so make sure you follow along as we unveil even more exciting milestones to come.
