Verkor Raises 250 Million Euros To Fund EV Battery Megafactory

French battery startup Verkor has lifted 250 million euros ($248 million) from buyers to fund a battery “megafactory” on its way to building a significantly much larger plant to make batteries for its shopper Renault, the corporation mentioned on Wednesday.

Verkor, which is based in Grenoble, said investors in the funding spherical bundled French bank Societe Generale, German industrial organization Siemens and the European Financial investment Lender, which set in 49 million euros.

The funding spherical arrives soon after the company lifted 100 million euros from investors in 2021.

Verkor is 1 of a handful of battery startups making an attempt to elevate funds and develop a homegrown European electric car (EV) battery sector to contend with the Asian giants that dominate international revenue.

Chief Executive Benoit Lemaignan said the megafactory was a crucial step in the startup’s development and will assistance it increase a even further 1.6 billion euros for a 16 gigawatt-hour (GWh) manufacturing facility in Dunkirk that really should start out creation in 2025 and will supply high-general performance batteries for Renault EVs.

Lemaignan explained the funding despatched an critical concept to suppliers that Verkor was scaling up and experienced money backing, as perfectly as a main carmaker as a purchaser.

“Financing is an critical piece in the puzzle we are creating,” he said. “This demonstrates we have the ideal people today, the proper gear and we have the resources we will need to ship quality samples of our products.”

Verkor stated that so significantly the company has been earning numerous batteries a day in its lab in Grenoble.

Commencing early upcoming 12 months the megafactory – a factory creating underneath 1 GWh of batteries – will develop hundreds of cells for each working day for Renault to test and use in its EVs.

As properly as perfecting its battery chemistry, the megafactory will assist Verkor master output at scale and educate men and women to at some point operate the Dunkirk gigafactory, Lemaignan mentioned.