Pre-seed funding round raises £1.3m for UK battery innovator

London-based TaiSan’s pre-seed funding round was led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures and followed by Heartfelt VC and Exergon.

The company said that adoption of sodium-ion chemistry is widely regarded as one of the next major BEV shifts, offering cost, sustainability, and safety benefits compared to lithium-ion. The global market is expected to be worth £1bn by 2028, reaching a capacity of 186GWh/year in 2030. 

In a statement, Lowina Lundström, CEO of EIT InnoEnergy Scandinavia, said: "Until now, we have mainly seen [sodium-ion] as an option for stationary storage applications. However, when we discovered TaiSan we immediately saw the potential for sodium-ion to move into new more demanding applications such as traction batteries or high-power batteries.” 

Launched in 2022, TaiSan has developed proprietary electrolyte and anode materials. The company’s Gen 1.0 product is said to have resulted in comparable volumetric and gravimetric battery energy density to an automotive lithium-ion equivalent, but with a projected 20 per cent cost saving over the most common chemistry for BEV batteries. Furthermore, TaiSan said its technology is based on sustainable and abundant, environmentally friendly materials, with no use of lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper metals.

The company further added that its technology offers industry-standard ionic conductivity to enable fast-charging, reduction of dendrite growth, high-capacity anode, and - with no leakage possible - no risk of fire. The IP is designed as a ‘drop-in’ solution to existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities.

To date, TaiSan has signed several MOUs with automotive manufacturers. The latest funding will help the company to progress with customer milestones and advance the development of the company’s electrolyte and anode materials. 

Company founder and CEO, Sanzhar Taizhan, said: “Our quasi-solid-state sodium battery offers significant cost, sustainability, and safety benefits for the BEV industry. TaiSan’s novel electrolyte and anode innovations will bring this chemistry to the next level – batteries becoming smaller, lighter, with best-in-class energy density, and major cost savings too. We will be announcing some game-changing results in the very near future.”  

​TaiSan has so far received nearly £500,000 in funding from UK government and research organisations, including the Department for Transport, The Faraday Institution, Innovate UK, Advanced Propulsion Centre, Royal Academy of Engineering and Catapult Connected Places.