An ongoing capital round that seeks to raise $5.6 million will move Jolt Energy Storage Technologies LLC closer to commercializing a low-cost option for storing energy.
The Holland-based Jolt Energy has secured commitments totaling $4.2 million from investors since launching the Series A capital round nearly two months ago, and is “actively working to fill the remainder,” co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Jack Johnson said.
Johnson expects the fundraising round to wrap up by the end of the summer. The funding will support developing a prototype that Jolt Energy aims to deploy next year with a local partner that will test the technology to prove the concept.
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“It’s going very well. People see the value here of having a super-low-cost alternative supply chain in energy storage,” Johnson said of the capital raise. “We have a fully working battery now and we’re working on scaling up, so our Series A gets us to working prototypes.”
Johnson and Chief Technology Officer Tom Guarr formed Jolt Energy in 2014 to develop low-cost energy storage for large-scale flow batteries that would allow utilities and other users to store and deploy electricity generated through alternative sources such as wind and solar. The energy-storage technology the company developed uses organic compounds, rather than metals such as nickel, cobalt, manganese, iron and copper that are mined, processed and refined at great cost.
A 2023 research report by McKinsey & Co. estimated the global market for battery energy storage systems will grow rapidly through the rest of the decade to a projected $120 billion to $150 billion in 2030, from an estimated $44 billion to $55 billion in 2023. Much of the growth will occur in the utility sector, followed by commercial and industrial, and residential uses, according to McKinsey & Co.
As Jolt Energy moves toward deploying a prototype, Johnson hopes to secure a strategic partner that can help to “mega scale” the company. The company’s founders would also consider selling the technology, Johnson said.
“We’re open to both (options) once we get running because this will be far outside of our ability to grow as big as demand would be,” he said.
Game-changing tech
As Jolt Energy moves down the commercialization pathway and closer to the marketplace, one of the investors in the present capital round was the Michigan Rise Pre-Seed Fund III.
A wholly owned venture capital subsidiary of the Michigan State University Research Foundation, Michigan Rise makes early-stage investments in technology startups that are working to commercialize an innovation.
Michigan Rise and the MSU Research Foundation’s Red Cedar Ventures investment fund made earlier investments in Jolt Energy, which uses technology licensed from MSU.
“We’re just really excited to see the traction the company is making after working with them for a number of years with the technology coming out of MSU,” said Jeff Wesley, executive director at Michigan Rise, Red Cedar Ventures and Spartan Innovations. “This is just awesome to see a technology like this coming out of the university. The impact this could have is just a great story.”
In Jolt Energy, Michigan Rise financially backs what Director of Venture Investments Tommy Skinner considers a “game-changing” technology that could help to address climate change.
After his first conversation with Johnson years ago, Skinner “had goose bumps” and told Wesley that “this is an energy-storage solution that could truly change the world,” he said.
“There’s a lot going on in this space and obviously we’re in a race against time as it relates to finding more sustainable ways to utilize and store energy,” Skinner said. “If you think about the orders of magnitude that this can store energy, it’s absolutely game changing. Everyone’s so used to thinking about batteries with rare earth metals and in short-duration batteries. To have a solution that could feasibly store the energy of massive solar farms, and the biggest problem with some of these energy sources is they’re intermittent, is huge.”
Michigan Rise’s latest investment in Jolt Energy follows a growth trend in venture capital deals in the energy sector in the last few years.
In 2023, venture capital funds in the U.S. invested $3.9 billion the energy sector through 230 deals, according to a quarterly report from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. That compares with $6.8 billion through 214 deals in 2022.
A few years earlier in 2020, the energy sector accounted for 145 venture deals for $1.7 billion, according to the second quarter Venture Monitor report from PitchBook and the NVCA.
Michigan Rise has invested in other energy-storage startups, including RedoxBlox Inc. in San Diego, California, and Chicago-based Switch Sourced LLC, both of which use technologies licensed from MSU.
“We need large-scale changes in the way we consume energy, and the best way to do that is game-changing technologies that can provide some solutions to some of these big problems at scale,” Skinner said.
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