Battery spinout About:Energy secures £1.5m seed investment

Spinout About:Energy has successfully closed a seed investment round with funding of £1.5 million.

The rounds had participation from  HighSage Ventures, Vireo Ventures, Rishi Khosla, Plug & Play Ventures, and Electric Revolution Ventures.

The funding will enable the battery software company, which started trading in 2022 after spinning  out of the University of Birmingham and Imperial College London, to establish an independent laboratory, expand the team, and accelerate industry adoption of its first product – a proprietary software platform called The Voltt, which was launched just two months ago.

The transition to electrification involves meeting the huge engineering challenge of building products with batteries and this requires accurate modelling of how a battery generates heat, fast charges, and ages over its lifetime.  To do this, the company’s founders will leverage existing world-leading research from Imperial College London and the University of Birmingham, which includes expertise in both electrochemistry and engineering.

The Voltt is set to transform the battery value chain by offering a comprehensive library of commercially available cells and their attributes alongside advanced modeling capabilities.  This will improve and clarify decision-making around battery design by simplifying cell selection, improving performance evaluation, and providing detailed insights into battery behaviour to optimize the use of electric vehicles.

The Voltt is currently being used by cell manufacturers, battery system developers, and automotive OEMs around the world.  About:Energy’s ultimate aim is to sell the Voltt to every industry that relies on batteries for energy storage.

About:Energy’s laboratory will be located in London.  It will enable the company to understand the lifetime of hundreds of different batteries and their impact on the environment, by collecting data on performance, cost, and carbon intensity and provide industry with a dataset that can optimize battery design holistically.  This data is already being leveraged by About:Energy’s customers which include leading automotive companies and battery manufacturers.

Gavin White, Co-Founder and CEO of About:Energy, said, “Our focus for the next 12 months is to establish About:Energy as a leading battery data and software company, and to leverage the power of The Voltt to drive innovation and efficiency in the industry. This investment will enable us to integrate the latest battery research from our partnering institutions, creating a comprehensive solution for battery design and optimization.”

Professor Emma Kendrick, Professor of Energy Materials at Birmingham’s School of Metallurgy & Materials, commented,  “This investment will enable further knowledge transfer in characterisation from academic partners and allow A:E to grow their high accuracy testing methods and procedures, providing data for the Voltt, and tailored solutions for sustainable battery design, manufacturing and integration.”

David Coleman, CEO of University of Birmingham Enterprise, said: “One of our primary goals is to see products and services launched that are based on University research.  It’s satisfying to see About:Energy launch its first product and achieve investor interest in such a short period of time since the company launched in 2022, particularly as the product will help accelerate the adoption of cleaner and more environmentally friendly options for energy storage.”