Anthro Energy breaks ground on US factory for solid-state batteries

Anthro Energy broke ground Tuesday on a factory in Louisville, Kentucky, that can make enough battery materials for more than 300,000 electric vehicles. But the facility’s headline output — 25 gigawatt-hours’ worth of electrolytes — is only part of the story: Anthro’s factory could give solid-state batteries a much-needed boost in the U.S.

Battery manufacturers are scouring the planet for materials that aren’t encumbered by “foreign entity of concern” problems — in other words, materials not controlled by Chinese companies. Anthro hopes its new facility, scheduled to start production in 2028, can fill that need for many U.S. companies. “When it opens, we’ll be serving domestic, high-spec customers, this emerging ecosystem for battery production where they frankly just need electrolytes — a domestic source of China-free supply, FEOC-free supply,” said David Mackanic, Anthro Energy’s co-founder and CEO, in an interview with TechCrunch.

The startup, which raised its first funding round just four years ago, wants its Kentucky factory to become a key node in the emerging U.S. battery supply chain: within a 12-hour drive, Mackanic said, the site can reach 70% of existing U.S. battery production facilities.

To build the factory, Anthro received a $24.9 million award from the Department of Energy under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and another $18.4 million in investment tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act; Kentucky added $2.3 million in tax incentives in exchange for 110 permanent jobs.

The Louisville factory will initially make a range of electrolytes, though Mackanic said he’d eventually like much of the output dedicated to Anthro’s own polymer product, Proteus, which is designed to drop into an existing production line with minimal tweaks — letting the startup begin production on other companies’ formulations before shifting to its own material once customers validate it. Proteus is meant to pave the way to solid- and semi-solid-state batteries, a holy grail for the industry; Chinese companies are reportedly looking to start trial production of solid-state batteries in 2027.

Solid-state batteries promise to fix several problems with today’s lithium-ion cells: they can boost energy density, reduce fire risk by eliminating flammable electrolytes, and — by forming a solid barrier between the anode and cathode — prevent dendrites, the spiky growths that can bridge electrodes and cause short circuits. But they have so far failed to reach their potential because no one has figured out how to manufacture durable cells cost-effectively at scale.

Anthro’s process might offer a way through: its electrolyte flows into the cell as a liquid, penetrating the anode and cathode like today’s liquid electrolytes, then firms up, gluing the two parts of the battery together. Mackanic said the resulting cell can be 10 to 15 times stronger than one using a liquid electrolyte, and flexible too — qualities he expects to eventually pay off in EVs as well as drones and robots. Plenty of other battery-materials companies have failed at the exact moment of scaling from small to larger production, but Mackanic is optimistic the federal funding will help Anthro clear that gap, since big applications require big production first.

Why it matters

Anthro’s factory could give solid-state batteries — a holy grail of the battery industry — a much-needed boost in the U.S., just as Chinese companies reportedly race toward the same technology.