EV Charging Firm Terawatt In $1 Billion Funding Deal

San Francisco based startup TeraWatt Infrastructure has raised over $1 billion from investors to expand a network of charging centers across the US focused on electric vehicle fleet customers.

The Four-year-old TeraWatt Infrastructure  came out of stealth mode in May 2021 , and has been co-founded by investment adviser Keyframe Capital. Cyrus Capital also funded it initially. Both companies are based in New York.

New investor Vision Ridge Partners joined the latest billion dollar funding round.

Ever since it’s formal launch, Terawatt has been picking up relevant real estate in key locations it considers relevant to fleets, like along highways to build out its charging centers. According to CEO Neha Palmer, former head of energy strategy at Google, the fresh funds will help the firm accelerate it’s expansion across the US.

TeraWatt currently has sites across 18 states that are being developing into charging centers. TeraWatt works with companies that have EV-first business models, as well as established companies that are starting to transition to EVs — and it works with fleets across light, medium and heavy-duty vehicles.

In the same week, Silicon Valley startup Ionblox said it has raised $32 million in Series B funding from strategic investors Lilium 5KD.F and Applied Materials AMAT.O, as well as Temasek, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.

Founded in 2017 and known formerly as Zenlabs, Ionblox is developing a pouch-type battery cell for electric vehicles, featuring a proprietary silicon oxide anode with a conventional nickel manganese cobalt cathode.

In addition to fast charging capability, Ionblox says its cell has high energy and high power, enabling its use in such applications as Lilium’s all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Zenlabs’ anodes are unique in their high loading level and high active silicon content. In addition, Zenlabs claims to have solved the common problems with silicon based anodes such as poor cycling and swelling. Zenlabs combines these high capacity anodes with high capacity cathode materials in large format pouch cells to achieve energy densities that are much higher than what is commercially available.