SAIF leads $30m round for battery maker Amprius
SAIF Partners has led a Series C round of funding worth $30 million for Amprius, a lithium-ion battery manufacturer headquartered in the US but with production lines in China. All of the company’s existing investors also participated.
Amprius will use the new capital to commercialize its high energy and high capacity batteries and further develop the next generation of its advanced batteries. The company's technology, originally developed at Stanford University, is based on using silicon rather than carbon anodes in lithium-ion batteries, which it is said to increase energy density and enable batteries to cope with more charging cycles.
Amprius has an R&D lab and its corporate headquarters in California and operates an R&D lab and a state-of-the-art pilot production line in Nanjing, China.
The company's Series A and B investors include Trident Capital, VantagePoint Capital Partners, IPV Capital, KPCB, Chinergy Capital, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Stanford University. The second round of funding was worth $25 million and completed in 2011. The size of the first round was not disclosed.
"Amprius' advanced technologies address consumer demand for high energy, long life batteries," said Andrew Yan, founding managing partner of SAIF Partners, in a statement. "We are delighted to invest in Amprius and accelerate the company's international growth. SAIF Partners supports Amprius' short-term focus on consumer electronics and shares the company's medium- and long-term interest in electric transportation."
Amprius is not the only VC-backed lithium-ion battery maker with a presence in the US and China.
In 2011, Boston-Power received $125 million from the Chinese government in partnership with GSR Ventures and existing investors Oak Investment Partners and Stockholm-based Foundation Asset Management. The capital, plus government incentives, is being used to bolster manufacturing, R&D and business development activities in China.
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