NanoGraf gets new battery contract worth up to $15 million from DOD
By Alex Zorn - Staff Reporter
January 10, 2024, 02:54pm CST
After opening North America's first large-volume silicon oxide manufacturing facility in December, Chicago battery startup NanoGraf Corp. furthered its partnership with the U.S. Army this week.
The battery startup, headquartered in the West Town neighborhood, received a new contract worth up to $15 million through the Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit.
The company will use the new funding to develop its batteries that it says are lighter and more energy efficient.
NanoGraf CEO Francis Wang said that the latest contract brings the DOD's total investment in NanoGraf to $24 million between 2023 and 2024 and estimated their overall commitment has totaled more than $40 million since the company was first founded in 2012.
The contract is through an initiative focused on developing a Family of Advanced Standard Batteries (FAStBat) leveraging commercial technologies.
"With the looming supply chain issues as well as China's dominance in this area, they knew they had to create a shortlist of batteries. That's what FAStBat is all about," Wang told Chicago Inno.
At the ribbon-cutting of its new facility in Chicago, Halimah Najieb-Locke, deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial base resilience at the U.S. Department of Defense, said that batteries and energy storage is one of the five areas that the DOD found to be critical to their success on the battlefield.
While NanoGraf's lighter and longer-lasting batteries serve an important function for soldiers in the field — where they can carry up to 25 pounds on a single mission — the long-term vision of the company is to power electric vehicles as well.
"The road map for NanoGraf has always been that we wanted to get a beachhead market. The military is the beachhead market for us," Wang said. "We knew we could create a product where we could generate margins to help solidify our company."
He said the startup's $65 million Series B round, which NanoGraf closed in early 2023, was meant to get it enough funds to supply the military themselves.
When the startup eventually goes for a Series C, Wang expects that funding to help get NanoGraf from its premium beachhead markets to mainstream electric vehicles. He's also looking at opportunities within the Biden administration to help scale electric vehicle infrastructure in the United States.