Lyten acquires facilities from Northvolt subsidiary Cuberg

US battery developer Lyten is acquiring the Californian battery production facilities of Northvolt subsidiary Cuberg. The Swedish company, which is currently in financial difficulties, closed its Silicon Valley branch in the summer in order to concentrate battery development in Sweden.

Image: Lyten

Lyten states that it intends to convert the production facilities in San Leandro, California, which it bought from Cuberg, for the manufacture of lithium-sulphur batteries. Cuberg had used them for the production of lithium-metal batteries. The acquisition will give Lyten two pilot production sites in future: San Leandro and San Jose, both of which are located in California.

The battery developer has been operating an automated pilot line in San Jose since May 2023. Lyten also produced the A-samples of its 6.5 Ah pouch cells there, which were delivered to Stellantis and other car manufacturers in May of this year. At the same time, Lyton is forging much bigger plans: in mid-October, the company announced its intention to build the world’s first lithium-sulphur battery factory in Nevada. As soon as the factory is fully operational, it should be able to produce 10 GWh of lithium-sulphur batteries per year.

Lyten was founded in 2015 and has raised more than $410 million in equity to date, including investments from Stellantis, FedEx, Honeywell, Walbridge and Prime Movers Lab. In February, Stellantis subsidiary Chrysler announced the use of Lyten’s Li-S batteries in its Halcyon concept vehicle.

By purchasing the Cuberg facilities, Lyton wants to put itself in a position “to enable up to 200 MWh of lithium-sulfur battery production in the Bay Area at full capacity.” Lyton is acquiring a 119,000-square-metre facility from Cuberg in San Leandro, about 30 minutes from Lyton’s headquarters in San Jose. The company says it plans to retrofit Cuberg’s battery cell development and production facilities and make additional investments to expand the plant’s capacity. For 2025, Lyton has announced an investment of up to 20 million dollars for both sites (San Leandro and San Jose). Commercial production in San Leandro is expected to begin in the second half of 2025, according to the statement.

“The acquisition of additional manufacturing capacity for Lithium-Sulfur is in direct response to fulfilling customer demand more quickly,” said Dan Cook, CEO and co-founder of Lyten. “Our customer pipeline has grown nine-fold since the start of 2024 and now numbers in the hundreds of potential customers. We are now working to allocate capacity from both San Leandro and our previously announced Reno gigafactory.”

The sale marks the end of a chapter for Northvolt. The Swedish company took over Cuberg just over three years ago with the aim of establishing a technology centre in Silicon Valley. Northvolt is now reportedly fighting for survival. In August, the company decided to relocate the development of its lithium metal battery technology from California to its Northvolt Labs research and development campus in Västerås, Sweden.

Previously, Northvolt had the lithium metal battery technology developed by Cuberg. Employees of the Californian subsidiary were ‘encouraged’ in August to apply for open positions at Northvolt in Sweden or Canada. This was despite the fact that Cuberg had significantly expanded its site in November 2023 to make room for the many new hires.

lyten.com

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