Israeli maker of smart 3D battery tech among 12 winners of BloombergNEF award
Addionics is rethinking battery architecture with smart electrodes that it says can improve performance, capacity, charging time
Ricky Ben-David is a Times of Israel editor and reporter
Israeli battery tech startup Addionics, a developer of smart 3D electrodes that the company says can improve battery performance, capacity, and charging time, has been named by BloombergNEF as one of 12 BNEF Pioneers in 2022.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) is the strategic research arm of Bloomberg, the financial information and news service, and covers global commodity markets and the disruptive technologies that are driving the transition to a low-carbon economy. BNEF runs the annual Pioneers contest, now in its 13th year, to highlight disruptive companies tackling global, climate-related challenges.
Winners of the 2022 contest were announced on Friday.
“It is a great honor…as an Israeli company to be selected by BloombergNEF for the prestigious Pioneer event,” Dr. Moshiel Biton, co-founder and CEO of Addionics, told The Times of Israel via email on Sunday. “BNEF stated that our technology would accelerate the transition to a carbon-free economy – and we certainly hope to prove that our technology will be an integral and vital part of this transition.”
Biton said the win was an “excellent achievement for the company and the team” as it looks “to fulfill the potential of our technology and to be able to push electrification, which is probably the most important revolution of our time.” Electrification refers to the process of replacing technologies that use fossil fuels as sources of energy.
The BNEF competition this year drew over 270 applications from 27 countries and candidates were evaluated based on three criteria: the potential impact on greenhouse gas emissions and the planet, the degree of technological innovation and novelty, and the likelihood of adoption and potential scalability.
Addionics was the only Israeli winner this year and the fourth Israeli company to have won the BNEF accolade in recent years. ECOncrete, an Israeli environmental infrastructure startup that has developed high-quality, cost-effective sustainable concrete for building ecologically friendly coastal and marine infrastructure projects, won in 2021. StoreDot, a developer of fast-charging batteries (the aim is five minutes) for electric vehicles, and REE, a company that is reinventing vehicles with a modular chassis, nabbed the recognition in 2020.
Israeli company WhiteWater Technologies, which developed a system for network water management, won the award in 2013 but closed its doors later that year.
Founded in 2017, Addionics is rethinking battery architecture to provide better battery technology.
“We are changing the architecture of the electrodes, not the chemistry,” Biton previously told The Times of Israel. In doing so, Addionics’ tech can enhance the performance of batteries no matter the type of battery chemistry. The company hopes to “integrate the solution into production lines and make it a core component of the manufacturing process,” Biton said.
He explained that existing battery technologies were currently not fit to support a future of all-electric transportation mainly because of energy storage. Addionics’ 3D structure design, made with AI algorithms and modeling, delivers high power and high energy by enabling greater loading of active materials, improving heat dissipation and the activation of cooling systems, he said. Its current collector geometries address the thermal, energy density, and mechanical challenges that plague existing batteries, the company claims.
By focusing on architecture and physics, Addionics is “betting on the entire race to make batteries more scalable and safer, not just on chemistry,” where competitors are currently pouring their energies, Biton said. “We are chemistry-agnostic so you can think of us as a complementary solution.”
Addionics is already working with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and Tier I companies on integrating its tech into existing assembly lines. Last summer, the company announced a new partnership with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), a British technology and innovation center, and the University of Warwick’s WMG, an academic department focused on knowledge transfer in engineering and tech, to cooperate on improvements in lithium-ion battery cell performance and manufacturing processes. The collaboration is known as Project STELLAR (Smart Three-dimensional ELectrode Lithium-ion batteries with Automated Robotics) and is backed by Innovate UK, the government-funded innovation agency.
Earlier this year, Addionics raised a $27 million Series A round to fund its ongoing efforts to redesign battery architecture for the electric vehicle market and similar industries in order to boost performance and reduce costs.
The Israeli company, based in Tel Aviv and London, said it plans to use the investment to expand its team, increase activities in the US and Germany, and reach commercialization by 2024.
Addionics was among 12 global BNEF winners in four categories which are listed as challenges. The first challenge recognized two American companies, one British outfit and one Italian startup working to “provide round-the-clock zero-emissions power challenge.” The second challenge honored companies “scaling long-term carbon removal technologies” with two US startups and one Icelandic company winning in this category. The third challenge — “decarbonizing aviation” — recognized two American winners developing emissions technologies.
BNEF also selects “wildcard” winners — innovative companies that don’t fit specifically in the selected challenges but so address “unique decarbonization issues.” Addionics won in this category alongside an American firm and a British company.
“We are cognizant of how essential new technologies are for tackling climate change, and how hard it is to scale innovation,” Claire Curry, selection committee co-chair and head of digital industry research at BloombergNEF. “Since 2010, this award has been a positive influence on climate-tech innovation, and we believe it is now more urgent than ever to highlight the technology gaps to reaching net-zero and the entrepreneurs addressing them.”
