#224 How to Scale up Anode Manufacturing in the US w/ Gleb Yushin (Sila Nanotechnologies)

Hear the story of how Sila Nanotechnologies has successfully developed, taken to market, and scaled up a new Anode technology for the battery industry. -- Learn the importance of Job Creation in landing funding -- Understand why CleanTech is actually bi-partisan -- and Understand where the puck is going with the battery industry.

Listen Time: Full Show 1:09:26 (no ads) | Free Preview 41:27

On today’s episode, Gleb Yushin, the CTO of Sila Nanotechnologies, pours out the wisdom he has from 14 years working on and scaling up Sila Nanotechnologies to the point where their Anode tech is in millions of batteries around the world. 

Not many companies reach this scale and even less so among climate companies. The lessons he has for you will benefit you massively. 

There are incredibly potent lessons on: 

• A successful GTM strategy for a battery chemical (Anode in this case) 
• How to fund your small and commercial scale production facilities. 
• Why there will likely be bi-partisan support for clean technology 
• Key lessons on team building and talent acquisition 

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Topics
**00:00 Intro
**02:57 The Journey of Gleb Yushin
**05:49 Founding Sila Nanotechnology
**09:03 The Role of Silicon in Battery Production
**11:53 Scaling Up Production
**15:12 Market Integration and Collaboration
**18:09 Challenges in Manufacturing
**20:51 Future of Battery Technology
**24:03 The Importance of Job Creation
**34:51 Rapid Iteration and Automation in Production
—(Free Version ends here)—
**38:05 Funding Strategies and Equity vs. Debt
**42:08 Government Support and Job Creation in Clean Tech
**45:57 Bipartisan Support for Clean Technology
**51:46 Talent Acquisition and Team Building in Startups
**1:02:10 Challenges and Trends in the Battery Industry
**1:04:32 Startup Opportunities in Battery Recycling and Supply Chain

Links
**Gleb Yushin | Sila Nanotechnologies
**Connect with Somil on LinkedIn | Connect with Silas on LinkedIn
**Follow CleanTechies on LinkedIn
**This podcast is NOT investment advice. Do your homework and due diligence before investing in anything discussed on this podcast.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:57 The Journey of Gleb Yushin
• 5:49 Founding Sila Nanotechnology
• 9:03 The Role of Silicon in Battery Production
• 11:53 Scaling Up Production
• 15:12 Market Integration and Collaboration
• 18:09 Challenges in Manufacturing
• 20:51 Future of Battery Technology
• 24:03 The Importance of Job Creation
• 34:51 Rapid Iteration and Automation in Production
• 41:00 End of Free Version [UPGRADE TODAY!!]

Transcript

CleanTechies (00:00)
New materials that have much higher capacity by weight and so you can make the anode thinner, you can have a smaller unit stack so you can pack more energy for smaller volume or you know for the same space you can pack more so you can have a longer driving range. In real life you have to have very high yield right? Exactly. If your automotive supply and your yield is I don't know 50 % you're bankrupt you know you can't survive on that. We would have multiple rounds of funding and honestly by now we raised over 1.3 billion dollars.

And if you would tell me this 13 years ago, was like, hey, you have to...

If you're hearing this now, it's because you are a paid subscriber to Clean Techies. Thank you so much for supporting our mission. Enjoy this ad-free listening experience. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Clean Techies, a podcast where we interview the leading climate tech entrepreneurs around the world, distill their lessons, and share them here for you all so that you can benefit from their experience. I'm Silas Manor, and today I will be your host. Today, I have the opportunity to speak with Gleb Yushin, the CTO and co-founder of SILA Nanotechnology.

If you are at all familiar with the innovators in the US battery industry, you will be pretty familiar with this name. Sila has developed anode technology that helps increase the density of batteries and reduce battery degradation over time, meaning you can recharge them more and more times before they kind of go kaput. So you're going to get a lot of lessons from today because they have a lot of development compared to many companies. Their batteries are in millions of devices around the world.

through partnerships like they have with Whoop and others. If you're not familiar with Whoop, it's kind of this band you wear. A lot of people track their sleep with it at night. kind of a high-end device and that's where they started, but they're moving into the EV battery space as well. So, in today, you'll hear Gleb's journey and the founding story of C-LED nanotechnologies. Then you will also hear a breakdown of how their technology works and why it matters, kind of specifically in that vein of getting off of the...

supply chain from China's graphite specifically. And then after that, we discuss a range of macro topics, including what the silicon supply chain looks like in the US, what the process of partnering with cell manufacturers looks like and how long it takes, kind of that testing phase to make sure things are all working out all right. How their go-to-market strategy looked, what they did, and just broadly speaking, some of the lessons they learned from that. He also talks about how they built their pilot facilities and then how they are scaling up to

large manufacturing facilities. think this is extremely important for anybody else going through the pilot or scaling up phase. If you are going to do this, stick around for that part of the conversation. It's extremely valuable to hear somebody who's gone through that experience. He talks about the financing of doing that as well. And then we also talk about why the words job creation are so important. I think this is something overlooked by a lot of climate tech founders. You'll get a lot of value out of that section. And then he talks about his advice for young career professionals in the battery space.

where the puck is headed in the battery industry broadly, and then a few of his favorite books. So enjoy this conversation with Gleb and let us know your thoughts. All right, welcome to the podcast, Gleb. How are doing today? I'm doing really well, thank you. Thank you for having me here. Absolutely. I'm super excited to have this. Obviously we had to push this back. I think this is first time I'll mention it on the pod that I just welcomed my first born into the world. So I'm now a dad and podcaster. I've got a little bit more motive behind Amazing journey. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

It definitely is, and I'm super excited for what comes of it, but we're here to talk about you. So I guess, you know, let's start us off with telling us who is one climate tech OG or clean techie as we like to call them that you would love to have dinner with and why. think the question is like who I can run the most from and maybe out of all, you know, companies working on clean technologies, I would highlight for solar. It's a company that most people don't know. They don't know how to wear them.

And they are in the solar industry and they focus typically on business to business. they produce solar cells for utilities and they develop their unique IP protected technology. They're scaling it up very economically, providing like tremendous values to end customers. And it's not small feat because, you know, China state government decided strategically that they want Chinese companies to dominate the supply chain and solar cells.

So they effectively massacred through incentives, know, low cost capital and so forth, almost any other competitor in, in us and Europe. But nonetheless, first solar survived and they prosper. have like multi 20 plus billion dollar market utilization. They're very rapidly and they're developing their unique technology that nobody else can can duplicate. And so I would probably learn a lot from the, you know, CEO of the first solar. It's Mark.

Yeah, it's really good point. think that not a lot of people recognize the, you could say the elephant in the room of people who have scaled, right? And that is one of very few companies in cleantech 1.0, you know, along with Tesla that really scaled up. And there's probably so many things to learn, especially of what not to do, right? What hiccups to avoid, right? Yeah, I followed them a little bit from my recruitment time in renewables, but I guess what is your personal journey into working on climate? How did you get involved in this space in the first place?

slowly and maybe not expectedly. So I got my PhD from NC State and working on semiconductor devices, very different from from CleanTech. And by the time I was graduating, I was planning to go to industry, you know, to go to Intel, Motorola, these kind of companies. And there was a hiring freeze, so couldn't get a single interview. But my plan B was, you know, if this doesn't work out, to join university as a postdoctoral associate. And I was very interested in entrepreneurship.

And so I thought, well, maybe I joined a lab that has some technology with commercial potential and I can bring it up. And so, and that's what I did. you know, the way I approached that, I just looked into the last few years at the time, papers published in science on nature, like top journals in the field and see which ones may have some commercial potential. And then I would reach out to professors who would lead the studies and see if there is something that's, know, if you have the opening of something.

And so that's how I joined the lab of Ukrainian American professor, Yuri Gagotsi at Drexel. And so that was a very exciting time. So I joined his lab and led a small team working on structured carbon materials for electrochemical supercapacitors, for hydrogen storage, for fuel cells, for biomedical applications and so forth. I guess like experiencing his lab...

change my perception of what academia is. There was so much excitement, so much collaborations, positive energy in his lab. So I thought, well, actually, academia doesn't have to be boring and dry. It can be very engaging, can be almost like a startup. So I started liking that. Also, I learned lot about green technologies and renewables and renewable energy for transportation. And when I joined Yuri's lab...

It was about the same time when Tesla was founded. So I kind of followed them a little bit. And then, you know, in a few years, I kind of thought that, you know, battery powered electric vehicles make more sense than supercapacitors one or the one or the fuel cell ones. know, but people don't work on batteries that didn't work on batteries at that time. And then, so we tried to license technologies from, from Drexel to have a startup company because we developed quite a few unique technologies, but we had troubles.

or with this licensing agreement. And after three years, I thought I'll just apply to another tenure track position in other schools and develop my own technology. And I wanted to focus on batteries in particular, not on fuel cells or supercapacitors. And so that's how I ended up at Georgia Tech. And that was 2007, some time ago. And so, you know, I focused on chemistries, the battery chemistries that theoretically were known to offer great potential and great performance enhancement.

lower cost, but we're known to degrade very rapidly. So in my studies, I focused on kind of fundamentals, what causes this degradation mechanisms, how we can overcome it. And so we have like some, some amazing publications in the first three years in science nature. And at that time I thought, you know, kind of, it seems like we can overcome through nanocomposite engineering, we can overcome all these degradations, we can make it work. And then the next step would be kind of how to commercialize it.

And so that eventually led to SILA. Yeah. It's really interesting that you, from the very first moment, you said that, you know, I was thinking about finding these technologies that have been researched and then finding ways to like focus on turning them into a company of some sort. It's kind of like always been in the back of your mind. What, I guess, where did that entrepreneurial influence come from? Where did that come from? So I'm originally from Soviet Union. I'm from Russia. you know, Soviet Union had always great science, great engineering, but they kind of sucked in entrepreneurship, right?

mostly they stole technologies in the West. And it's very frustrating. And I thought there is some magic in how to bring technologies from from zero to one and scale it up and have massive impact. And you think it's the impact can be much larger compared to what you can do as a professor in the lab, you can have amazing publications, but to have a large impact, somebody has to commercialize it, know, either your students or somebody else or you can do it yourself.

And so you have all the background, all the expertise, kind of, this is something you could do it. But also I was thinking inspired, there was a, I was into art in my previous life and there was a book about Schliemann who was very passionate about archeology. And so he started different businesses, but then ended up, you know, by his 40s with sufficient net worth so they can focus solely on his passion.

Kind of when I was very young, I thought my passion is art. So I thought, you know, I'll do some business and I'll do art in the end of my life. But now over my lifetime, my perception changed. Now I'm much more passionate about entrepreneurship than about anything else, about bringing technology from scratch to the markets and making an impact. I think it's really difficult when you're young to truly understand what motivates you. It's very difficult because there's so many conflicting kind of ideas about how you live life and who your influences are.

But at the end of the day, you just kind of keep working forward. if you're willing to reflect, you eventually settle into the way that you think it's right. And who knows? Maybe 10 years from now, that's not what you're supposed to do, right? Maybe something else. But I think this is always a fun part of people's challenges. I want to understand, I guess, so you explained how you got to where CELA came out of, But what was the, I guess, origin there at that point? You mentioned that battery degradation was a challenge, but you thought batteries were the future.

So tell us a little bit more about the actual origin story of founding the company and coming up with that idea and then how you got to where you are today. I would say the batteries, they degrade, but they don't degrade very rapidly. Just new materials that have this new potential that can reduce the cost, improve performance, those materials degrade very rapidly. And then as soon as I realized that actually we can make it work through like rational and composite engineering, then I was thinking about how can I make an impact? And so my initial thought, I didn't have any experience in industry or with any startup before.

And so my thought was that, well, I can probably can work with large company that can help me to commercialize these technologies. Somebody like BSF or some other large company. And then I start talking to people in the areas, like, is it a path to success? And they kind of changed my perception. They told me, no, you can have a champion in these companies, right? They can be excited about this, but you know, this idea might take much more resources than initially envisioned.

or the champion may leave or something else may happen or maybe the company may change priorities. And then the chances for success become smaller. While in a startup, everybody's aligned for the same goal. So in a booth, venture capitalists, founders, early employees, all employees are aligned to make it successful. And so focused on the outcome, focused on the results. And what I wanted to do with my life is I wanted to have a high probability of the positive impact. And so that's why I wanted to focus on startup.

without any experience, we had the Georgia Tech incubator space. And so they provided some support, but without zero experience, didn't feel comfortable to do it successfully. So I started meeting with different people with experience in entrepreneurship experience, large executives in large companies. So I met overall with like 20 plus people. for me, until I met Gene, my co-founder, and I think he was...

way, way more special than anybody else I met before. So he, he had a business acumen, but he also had very good experience in engineering. think he's brilliant engineer. He had like 20 patents and he was one of the earliest employees at Tesla. And so he had all of knowledge and experience from, from that. But in addition, he was special because he was very empathetic. So when somebody is so empathetic, helps you to build trust, you know, because it's a journey, right? It's like.

almost selecting your life partner. You have to build trust and you have to do it in a very short timeframe. And so he had this empathy and it was very, it felt very special. And then he was also had a much grander vision. So sometimes the people I met, they would be like, where is the technology now? How long does it take to go to the next level so we can sell the company? It's not very inspiring. And so Jin was like, no, no, I want to build a company that would outlast us. Maybe I would last our

children, right? And that's so much more inspiring. You know, this is something that I be excited to do. And so, you know, we kind of joined forces. And so at that time I didn't have tenure. So he moved from Silicon Valley. He moved to Atlanta and brought another co-founder, Alex Jacobs, who's a brilliant engineer. He helped build databases and lot of infrastructure for the company. And then they also brought several engineers from Silicon Valley. And I had contacted some of my colleagues, you know,

scientists. And so we had very small but strong team of both scientists, engineers, and when we have scientists to overcome some scientific challenges, technical challenges, and gain deeper understanding of the processes and limitations, while engineers can help build unique tools so that we can innovate much faster or develop tools that can help us scale up technology when it is ready to have a massive impact. Because sometimes you make it work scientifically, but it's not scalable, it's too expensive, or it's too limited.

So we wanted to avoid that in the first place. we kind of with the third co-founder, we had this vision. we developed a of materials company that would tackle challenges at the batteries with science at scale. so hoping to bring renewables closer to life, accelerate the growth of renewable energy. It seems pretty important to that story that Gene understood a little bit about what was going on in the battery industry and could see the potential, right?

And I think this is always a challenge when it comes to recruiting, especially co-founders, but you know, just early employees in general is there's always this like push and pull like, hey, come work for us. But then at some point it has to stop being come work for us and they want to work with you, right? They have a really kind of, they're the one pulling. And for anybody listening who hasn't gone through that process, that's very important to recognize that kind of pull, pull, pull, but then eventually they should be pulling you along too. It's got to be a good relationship there. That's really helpful. And then I guess just for people who are maybe a little bit unfamiliar,

Just really briefly, what is the scale you guys have reached today? Where are you in your development overall? So we have two plants. We have a plant in Alameda, California. So it's relatively small. It's equivalent of 50 megawatt hour. Next year it will be about 100 megawatt hour. So it's a small amount of materials, plenty for small wearable devices, but definitely not enough for automotive industries. And then the final stages of building the plant in Moses Lake, so much larger. And it has several stages.

final stage, we envision well over 150 gigawatt hours. So, know, quite meaningful for electric vehicles and in many other applications. And so, you know, and we are the final stages of first phase. First phase will be like maybe a few gigawatt hours. So, it's still moderate, but enough for some, you know, for some customers. then in terms of the, I guess, the impact that you want to have, I always like to ask people this, like if you are able to successfully scale this to the level of first solar or beyond.

What does the impact of your technology look like on the world? I mean, our goal was, as I mentioned, accelerate the move to renewable energy. And so how do we make electric vehicles more appealing, for example? How do we make sure they're much more efficient, they're lighter, they have faster charging time, they have longer driving range, they have a lower cost. And to do that, you have to go to a very large scale. But the path is not like when you have a small scale in the lab and then you build this gigantic factories, right?

you have to have intermediates. And that's what we are going through. Yeah. Okay. So let's break this down then kind of point by point in terms of the technology. some people may be familiar if you are, know, feel free to skip ahead. But if you're not like I was when we first started talking, what is, what part of the battery technology are you working on? So at the moment, so the battery can process of like anode and cathode separating between. And so, you know, we are focusing on the anode at the moment and this technology we're scaling up. And so

Essentially, what we are bringing, we're bringing these new materials that have much higher capacity by weight, six times or more, by volume, two, three times more. And so you can make the anode thinner. And so it has two advantages. On one, you can have a smaller unit stack, so you can pack more energy for smaller volume. So if you have, for example, in the requirements for the vehicle, say 100 kilowatt hour, whatever it is, your pack can become smaller, right? Or for the same space, you can pack more, so you can have a longer driving range.

But another advantage is that because your anode is thinner, you can charge it much faster. So the charging time is roughly proportional to the square of the thickness of the electrode. So if you make the anode thinner, you can charge much faster. So you can increase charging time by two or three times or more. And that's what we're focusing on. But in the longer term, we do plan to innovate in multiple areas. Of course. Innovative, more revolutionary technologies. Yeah. OK. Understood.

So, and then in terms of the anode itself, what is typically used and then, you know, to what extent you're able to kind of explain very simply what are you using in replacement of that? Yeah, for sure. So typically people use graphite, you know, all of those are well known, you know, this is almost initial chemistry that people introduced like three decades ago when they introduced lithium ion batteries. It hasn't changed that much since that time.

And so you have, when lithium intercalates into graphite intercalation means it finds some interstitial positions within the crystal structure of graphite and put lithium in. And typically you need six carbon atoms to store one lithium. And so what we are working with is silicon chemistry. And so with silicon, you need like one silicon atom to host four lithium atoms. And so it sounds exciting, right? You can have much smaller weight, smaller volume.

The challenge is that when you literally eat silicon, it expands a lot. And so this expansion can cause all sorts of issues, like the chemical, chemical, mechanical. And so with nanocomposite engineering, we overcome these challenges. And so another challenge with graphite, not fundamental challenge, but the way it is kind of dealt with nowadays is that there is significant push to reduce costs. And so, you know, most of the graphite production is controlled by one country, China. Yeah.

You know, you lose control over the environment when the graphite is being mined, right? You can consume a lot of energy. This energy might not be renewable. You often pollute everything around yourself, right? You consume a lot of CO2. So they meet a of CO2, not consuming. You meet a lot of CO2. And so we kind of replace this technology with something much more efficient, much more effective, but that kind of relies on engineering. And so instead of escalation of...

of the natural materials. So then, obviously, people would probably comment, hey, maybe you could say the counter argument is, hey, it's too expensive to use this because it requires engineering versus graphite is a little bit less, I guess you could say, process intensive. So is there any reason to believe that you can't reach cost parity with the way graphites produce in terms of the actual capacity you can produce? That's a good question.

But the answer is absolutely. if you have, if you rely on natural resources and you know that your demand is going to go up, your cost is not going to go down. Typically goes up, right? So you have high demand for metals, nickel, cobalt, the price goes up, right? You can't control it. But engineering, with time and with scale, the cost always goes down, right? If you think about the cost of a chip, you know, 30 years ago, was much more expensive. So with engineering, you can drive down the cost.

And when you rely on natural resources, you cannot. And then if you think about it, silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth's crust. It's actually as abundant as all other metals, semi-metals combined. So you don't have supply chain issues. You can use silicon everywhere. then the capacity of silicon is, pure silicon is roughly 10 times higher. So you can have this abandoned material that is cheap in the raw state, right?

that has 10 times higher capacity compared to graphite. you know, for the same, if you excavate it, actually it's more abundant. So it should be cheaper in the raw state. So yes, you do this engineering, you do this processing, which is at the moment more expensive than graphite, but over time it can be cheaper, right? And you have then this advantage because you have higher capacity. So you don't need to produce as much. And then don't need to process, you don't need to ship it back and forth.

You don't need to rely on a few large factories to produce it. And you can have very clean technology that is kind of localized, one maybe in Europe, one in North America, one in Asia, that will be clean, efficient, and with scale, the cost is going to go down. So in terms of bringing the cost down, you mentioned obviously engineering challenge, but how much of the supply chain is already built out for silicon in the US specifically? So supply chain, just broadly speaking,

in batteries is in their state, know, all the majority of anode materials are graphite, right? So 95 % of graphite is controlled by China. You know, almost 100 % of the base film for separators also controlled by China, majority of cathode supply chain is controlled by China. So in the US supply chain is kind of small, not necessarily non-existing, but very small. And so, you know, we develop this new technologies that kind of changes

basically introduces the category shifts moving away from graphite to silicon is a category shift. It doesn't happen very often. we were the first to innovate and develop this technology at Seal and now we are scaling it up. So we hope to not only be very good in innovation, but also very good in manufacturing. And so we can produce enough materials to secure a supply chain for our customers. Got it. And then just to clarify though, is there already some...

Silicon is used for many different things in my understanding. So is there some level of supply chain of silicon production that would feed into your supply chain? That's kind of already somewhat built out in the US. we rely on selling gas and we secure long-term supply agreement with the US. But you sell gas. yeah, that's the technology of this gas production is pretty straightforward. It's pretty old. So it's a matter of investment of capital and utilities. So the cost can be...

can be quite small in such a Got it. So I'm going to try to recap a couple of things here just to make sure people understand this. the technology itself, you're creating a different type of anode to use to replace graphite, kind of for a few different reasons. Mainly, it has better density, so you can charge it more times, or you can fit more in it for a smaller space, which is helpful for lightweight applications or for packing more range into an EV, for example. Everybody wants a 500-mile, 600-mile EV.

even though gas cars only usually get 400. I don't understand the complaint there. But that's one piece. This also would allow for kind of getting off of the supply chain issues that we have with China, for example. And then in terms of your technology, what you guys are aiming to produce is strictly the anode materials, which then currently at least could be sold to other battery cell producers. You're not aiming to produce your own cells, at least not yet, correct? That's right. So you can just kind of plug into the existing supply chain.

Let's talk slightly about that. Make sure I've got all that right before we move on. Okay. So if you are selling, you know, materials to a different type of materials to a battery cell manufacturer, how does it look like for them? I understand that you guys have to send samples probably to get these things tested, but how does it look like to integrate with these other cell producers? And are they open to that or are they pretty skeptical? How does that look? Well, that's a question. So our technology is drop-in compatible, so they don't need to change equipment, how they integrate our technology in the facilities.

You know, in the meantime, you know, some cell makers excited about it. Others are kind of, you know, more excited about mass market and mass market is still graphite. And so they would want to just produce as many cells as they can for the time being. And so, but what happens is that the end, not end users, but the OEMs, so the car makers or the device makers, they're excited about this technology because it can help them to differentiate from the competitors also increase overall appeal of their vehicles or devices.

So they kind of pushing that. So what happens often, not always, but what happens often is that we work with the carmakers or device makers. They're excited about our technology. And then they say, Hey, we really want to work with the company ABC for the cell development. So then we have to have a joint agreement between three of us. So we can integrate our technology in cells and then the cells are going to be powering new devices on new cars. And so, you know,

But it still requires a lot of back and forth. So they still need to adopt, change the recipe, right? Honestly, if you change the graphite from one supply to another supply, you still need to change the recipe. For the mix of the recipe, the slurries, the discos, everything changes. And so they have to have this recipe change. then would we, maybe in contrast to many other companies, do we provide a lot of engineering support? So we provide kind of notes, you know, how to best use our materials. What is the best core products that we found work really well with our materials?

And we kind of help them every step of the way. So if they have challenges, it's important to communicate it very quickly so we can help them to understand what happens, the likely cause so we can move on. And the key is to have very short iteration cycles so we can discuss the results, there is a challenge, how to overcome it, do experiments, confirm it, and move on. But overall, think, especially in cars, the requirements are very severe. So the car needs to survive for like...

15 years, right? If you buy a car, you you pay a lot of money. You don't want to replace it every five years. want to last quite a significant amount of time. And so there are multiple tests, right? That service life has to be long. So you have to do high temperature storage tests. You have to do, you know, cycle life tests under different conditions, different temperatures. You have to ensure that the, you know, stacks and the batteries are safe, that the battery pack is also safe. The models are safe.

So a lot of testing. So sometimes you change something, you have to kind of overcome new challenges that you're not aware of. And that's why this building trust, building very close collaboration and understanding for us to understand batteries really well is very important for successful technology adoption. We want to make sure that our partners are excited to work with us, right? That we provide all the needed support for them to.

kind of smoothen and simplify the journey. Yeah, it sounds like, to some extent, this is not exactly a massive change because if they, as you mentioned, if they change supplier, even then they still have to make sure they do a few kind of test runs to make sure it works. And what you're proposing is that effectively they can keep running on the same exact equipment. So it's not like they have to upgrade their equipment of any sort that's kind of baked into it. And if they decided to stop using you, they could continue using, you know, graphite style cell production, right?

Let's back up a little bit. You already alluded to this. I want to kind of shift into, I guess you could say, go to market generally a little bit. So you mentioned earlier, you worked out with some small device companies kind of for your specialty, let's call it specialty production at a lower scale. Can you just talk to people about the importance of identifying that kind of, let's say, specialty market that will pay more for a battery when you haven't reached that cost reduction piece yet? And then how you kind of parlay that into going up to the big leagues with EVs.

Yeah, I think it's a very good question, Silas. I think, so if you have, if you just focus on electric vehicle markets, right, you want to have this very large impact. The only one to talk to you, if you can produce this gigantic amount of material, right. And then you have to satisfy all these crazy requirements. But before you build this gigantic factory, you have to build a factory which is smaller, right. And to the risk technology to make sure that it works on a smaller scale. And so we go smaller volumes, the cost going to be higher.

So then you have to have technologies that would benefit from your technology or devices that benefit from your device, from your technologies at, you know, more, that would be more cost forgiving. And so in battery materials, it's a very nice system that the batteries can help lots of devices, can help small wearables, can help like, know, large wearable devices, you know, and then eventually can help cars. And so you're moving from like in milligrams of material to device to like grams to tens of grams to then kilograms, then tens of kilograms.

And then as you move through those different scales, you over time typically make materials better and better and better so they can satisfy most most urgent requirements. And so that worked really well for us. We are in the market for millions of devices by now. So for three years. so we learned that technology really works, works really well. We have no incidents, have no safety issues, we have no premature death issues.

And that brings additional confidence to our customers in other spaces. And so in our eyes, we don't want to be delusional. We want to make sure that technology really works, not what we think it works, but to have a confirmation that it works. And so we do all these tests in automotive batteries, very, very comprehensive tests requiring lots of materials and a lot of time, a lot of money. But we also want to make sure that there is no fundamental flaws that we overlooked.

by accident. So having devices in the market for a long time is very special. Yeah, that definitely the proof of the pudding, right? Show up to a demo if it's just a whiteboard, it's not the same as showing them a physical product, right? If you're going to have a PowerPoint, right? I don't know, is it like with all devices that you tested or you selected three out of 100 devices you tested? Because in real life, you have to have very high yield, right?

Exactly. If have automotive supply and you yield, I don't know, 50%, you're bankrupt. You can't survive on that. And so you have to have, really, have to be in millions of devices to prove that, your technology is real. This is the hard part, I think a lot of hardware or deep tech founders, I guess you could say, in climate are facing is obviously it is a long time, right? I think you guys have been at this, 13 years now or 10 years? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So we were like in Georgia Tech incubator for first three years, with a small team. So if you don't count that, only a decade. Yeah. So still, I mean, it's still a long time, right? And certainly something that a lot of VCs would be like, hey, when are you guys going to IPO or sell or something, right? So, you know, there's certainly some challenges there, but I think it's just important for people to be realistic about it. And you have to have that kind of proof in the market before you move on. So let's talk about this.

In the scale up journey, the manufacturing process, right? If you're manufacturing a material that's used in other companies, like in batteries in this case, how did you start initially? So I'm sure you had some lab space for the but once you needed to produce a handful of samples for a client, who did you work with? And then what are the steps that you took from there to get to the point where I believe you guys not that long ago announced your big plant in Georgia, right? No, Moses Lake in Washington.

So we historically were developing our own equipment and making our samples. So initially Georgia Tech incubator, but obviously it's very small amount of samples. So, because we had small amount of samples, we developed very unique cell technologies. We made very small, but very precise batteries that would tell about, you know, performance of the materials quite precisely. At least not everything, but most of the parameters were precisely controlled on a cell level. So we can predict, okay, we have performance of this tiny cell.

but because it's so well controlled, so well engineered that we can know that when we send materials to our customers, they're going to have similar performance in larger devices. And then when we moved to California, to Alameda from Atlanta, Georgia, we kept the same philosophy. So we would design our own equipment and we would produce our own materials. And that's why we built pilot scale production five years ago.

And they're still supplying materials for small variable devices from these facilities in Alameda. But then when you go to larger scale, what you also realize is that you cannot build your own equipment at scale. You need to rely on partners who have been building this equipment for a very long time. And so our issue was initially just kind of trust issues because we didn't want somebody else making equipment and then selling it to our competitors, selling to China, somewhere else. And so what happened was that...

we develop exclusive relationship and so we have different equipment pieces and so we buy these pieces of equipment from different companies and we integrated ourselves, we develop our own software to run the tools to do all the magic. And so, and I think it works quite well because we all have the same incentives, they're interested in our success, we are interested in our success and so we plan to work with these partners at much larger scale. So let me get that right. So you're saying that initially you guys built your own equipment mainly from an IP perspective, you said, hey, we wanna control this.

I'm assuming like a side note with that would be you had more control over quicker iteration rather than using a contract manufacturer. Is that also accurate? You're right, actually. I didn't mean to mention that, Silas, you got a very good point. So not only we could iterate much faster, we also at very early stage, which is unusual for companies, we use a of automation. So we built robots to make materials. And so we can synthesize 10 samples in 24 hours.

Yeah. Now human interaction. it improved precision of the kind of control, but also improved how much materials they can produce. We can produce a lot in each round, but we can produce enough to do evaluation. Yeah. Because we had small cells. then, so continuing on that thread, after you, we needed to get to a larger scale. You said we can't build all of the equipment ourselves, but let's figure out, you know, what are the baseline components that we can kind of compile from other people and maybe, you know, sprinkle in a little bit of our own special sauce.

That way it's not just like a wholesale out there on the market. Somebody else is going to take it and produce it because in a way the equipment itself is the IP because it's producing an output, a chemical. Yeah, that's right. Equipment is IP. We typically keep it as an Ohio or sometimes we do have a patent on equipment design. in the US you can do non-publication patents. So we have tons of patents that we never published. Because when you publish the patent, you have to tell the world how you do it.

there are some parts of the world where the IP is not really respected. So I kind of don't want them to copy it. Yeah. So, but you know, we want to have this kind of, you know, fleet of sub we call submarine patterns, you know, patterns that are never published in case we need them in case somebody is attacking us or we have to protect our own IP, you know, but typically, you know, the most historical way to do it is know how it was because in many cases, you know, what equipment you use to produce the material.

It determines the quality, it determines the performance, but it's very hard to prove that you use exactly the same equipment or exactly the same process. I can, for example, open the cell and say, oops, it's copycat materials because it infringes on hundreds of our patterns, but I cannot tell with 100 % certainty. I can be convinced myself, but it's very hard to convince everybody else that they used exactly the same processes or exactly the same design. It's much harder and I cannot go...

to China and say, can I open your factories and I'll inspect it and see if you use my feet. It's not realistic. It's not realistic. Yeah. So, okay. So then you built this kind of pilot facilities. What was the first kind of larger scale production that you guys, were you just producing it all from your pilot facilities for those small wearables or did you build another facility? My question is to point it here is what did it look like and how did you fund it? Did you have like proof from other people saying,

We've got this correct and we know that we can scale to this level. So give us a debt facility so that we don't have to do it all in equity. Can you just explain that part as well? I wish we could do that. In reality, that is not a question for us. Because as a startup, you can have debts, but in very harsh conditions, can kill you. You can destroy yourself as an individual. You can also destroy yourself as a company if the debt has a...

lot of tooth attached to it, a lot of strings attached to it. So we always use equity. So yes, we get diluted, but you know, it's better to succeed. You know, nobody died from dilution. And you know, I'm personally, my founder is the same, you know, we are focused on success of the technology and large impact. We don't care that much about, know, dilution of the shares. It's all about the impact. And so that kind of was never a question. And so, you know, we would have multiple rounds of funding and honestly, you know, by

by now we raised over $1.3 billion. And if you would tell me this 13 years ago, it's like, you have to raise so much money to be successful. I would say, okay, forget about it. It's completely unrealistic. But if you do step by step, you kind of prove technology at small scale, right? Then you get other people excited. Then you get lots of interest from third parties, from automakers, from cell makers. They evaluate your technology at small devices. Then you build the pilot facilities and you run it 24 seven, multiple, multiple years. And you see...

you see all the issues and sometimes you have to modify the technology to make sure that these issues don't come up at a scale. Then we built, like a few years ago, first kind of small factory line in Alameda. So it's larger than the pilot. You can also call it pilot because it's relatively small scale compared to Modus Lake factory. And then you go there and then you kind of secure some additional contracts and you build...

much less facilities. This is our most like, so the project is overall almost four years. It takes time to build a factory, especially if you do it from like from zero to one. Now we can build the same factory before. And so it's a lot of effort to build it and to finance. Yes, you have to use equity for the time being. So you get diluted, but

Is that even true for the Moses Lake facility or by that time had you had enough kind of success that you could use in project financing or was it just pure equity? you have any like nine to look for grants? they look at Moses Lake as a real factory and the stage to risk, you you have this kind of toy factory in the lamina, it's much smaller, know, it's 100 times smaller in scale, 50 times smaller in scale. I need something in relevant size, right, to feel comfortable.

that you can produce materials at large scale, I would have similar better quality, right? And so, because the quality for any large customers is the key. If you don't have sufficient quality controls, and believe me, the quality controls in automotive, or even fancy devices is really harsh, right? So they just, it's very risky for them. So you have to build the first phase, first factory, and then when you want to scale it up and say, hey, I'm going to use the same tool, just going to have

10 tools instead of one tool, then it feels like, it's pretty low risk. You already proven that you can scale, you already proven that you can produce, and you proven that you know what quality control is and you may be the best in quality control. so we trust that you... So the next phase, can be probably financed. Yeah. This is, think, something a lot of people misunderstand is that the pilots don't necessarily count as first of a kind, right? People always talk about folk being, folk financing, but somebody... I forget exactly who said this, but they said...

first few of a kind basically. And then once you've produced a full scale, this is what the show is going to look like. We've got this huge factory. Then second and third, you might be able to get a little bit of debt financing or project financing, but it's still going to be tough for the first probably couple. then, okay, now we know you know how to do it and then let's let it rip, right? And I think that's a hard part for people to accept that there's not just going to be some debt facility fairy that shows up and says,

Here's some money to build this thing. It would be nice. Honestly, it would be super nice. If people don't realize Chinese government spent like $300 billion to support solar industry, not like a billion or two, $300 billion and now they dominate the field. So if you want to compete with that, you know, yeah. Definitely have to pony up the cash, right?

So, okay, so just to clarify then, you haven't received any like DOE grant funding or loans like that at all or LPOs? We did receive grant funding. Honestly, this grant funding was instrumental for us at different states of the company. So initially when we had the first round, people called it C, we called it A round. It's $5 million, it's relatively small. And we thought we would achieve all the milestones, we'd develop all these technologies, improve it within a year or two, so there's plenty of money for that.

In reality, things took longer time. We also wanted to make sure that the path we selected is the winning one. So we had to test everything else that didn't work and then selected the path that turned out to be the most successful one. And so it took us longer time. And if we didn't get the funding, so we got the government grant from our department of energy, we got over three million from them. We got some non-deleted funding from actually industrial partner.

which is super unusual. I thought it's normal. Apparently it's super unusual that they would give grant with almost no strings attached to us. That was very special. And they got some money from other small grants from other agencies. so with double amount of money that they got from VCs, we succeeded. But if you had only half of that, and I don't think she would fund it further without any milestones met, would probably be.

with Adva now. And then, you know, when we were scaling up technology, so when we considered the Moses Lake factory, we, at the same time, we got RPE grant for the scale up. And so it's very special because the government want to encourage you to take more risks, you know, and do something greater. And so the kind of influenced our decision on, on this, on the type of reactors we use. So we use much more innovative reactors, much more efficient, but the risk is kind of delayed the factory by

over a year, maybe almost two years, but it was the right decision and kind of government pushed us, which is unusual, You don't expect government to push you in the right direction, but the government pushed us in the right direction. And so I'm like super helpful for that. And then finally, for the Moses Lake factory, the government also supported us with a hundred million dollars for the workforce development, for some of the facilities. It's a small portion of the overall cost, but still, and you know, with this investment climate now, it helped us to

build more trust with investors. It helped us secure the latest round of funding. So definitely it was very positive. And honestly, once we now kind of bring technology back, bringing factories back, manufacturing back to the States, you have to have it to be competitive. China does it in a much larger scale. So if you don't offer the same, it's not kind of equal playing field. Somebody who has tremendous advantage over you and if

If you don't match that, essentially you would perish. Yeah. Now, this is a good kind of segue into the topic of job creation because I think climate technology often gets caught up in this culture war. It's green tech versus just like pure old school oil and gas. And I think people oftentimes forget that. You can just drop the clean. It's just technology, right? Technology is advancing. We're making things better. If you look at the way the oil refineries and things were run,

in the 1800s, they definitely improved from there because they're like, my gosh, all of this pollution is literally killing our workers. So they did get better at it, not because they necessarily cared about the environment. They were like, well, this is really bad. And I think that this is something that gets caught up a lot is called clean technology, when really it's just an advancement of technology. And as you mentioned before, China put 300 billion into advancing the solar space and now they dominate it. And now we're catching up.

This is the thing I want to talk about a little bit is if we care about American exceptionalism or whatever you want to call it, American dynamism, I think Andreessen Horowitz calls it, we've got an incoming kind of red wave Republican administration broadly, right? And a lot of people are really, really concerned about the climate tech sector, right? The investment and the possible rollbacks of the IRA. But can you maybe speak a little bit more about that job creation side and how states have been involved because states have their own kind of objectives for jobs, et cetera?

And what's your maybe broader outlook is for SILA and for the battery industry broadly under a Trump administration? Do you have any perspective there? You know, I think I would say it's irrespective whether people are Republicans or Democrats. think most people understand the importance of industry. I would say if anything, people sometimes a little bit too much in the extreme left, they kind of underestimate the impact or importance of industry because we can have these amazing ideals, Fantastic ideals.

and no economic, no political power to implement them. You know, if you don't develop industries, become, you know, then at some point you won't be able to have even defense against authoritarian regime or anything, right? It's all about the industry. And so if you don't build strong industry as a foundation for the democracy, you're kind of done. And so, you know, I would say, yes, in Washington, definitely you have the government as Democrat, but in, for example, in Georgia,

The governor is Republican, it's a swing state, but the governor is Republican and he is one of the strongest proponent of EVs. Like he, his team did tremendous job bringing like over $25 billion of investment in the last five years to support EV industries, to support kind of battery industries and supply chain related to batteries. It's just outstanding how much of an impact he made to Georgia, right? And so it's not relevant to whether it's kind of...

clean technology or not, it's technology, it's the future. And so if you want to be in the future, right, if you want to be included, you have to think on that front, right? And so, and he's doing a tremendous, you know, fantastic job. so I'm thrilled to be, to be part of Georgia Tech because in Georgia, lots of government agencies, like the state of economic development, know, state of education, they all kind of integrated well with each other. They all talk to each other. And so there is clearly very strong alignment that we have to push this forward.

And it's a issue, it's a matter of job creation. Yes, I totally agree with that. I guess, we've already outlaid this on our episode recapping the post-election kind of situation, but I am pretty optimistic that we'll find a way to make climate tech truly bipartisan because we'll just start calling it technology, right? Or something to create jobs because otherwise the manufacturing and the production of the future is all going to go elsewhere, right?

And that's going to haul out a huge kind of part of America, is not a good situation if you believe in the American ideal. But it's really helpful to hear that specific example of the Republican governor who's interested in advancing things. I believe within a day or two of Trump's election, there was, I think, something like 18 senators or congressmen who came out in favor of the IRN and said, hey, please do not repeal this. It's benefiting our constituents very, really deeply. So please don't get rid of it. Most of the time, it went to the red stage.

Exactly. do you have any like, I guess, has SILA been able to kind of benefit in some ways from the IRA? Yeah. I'm kind of curious if any of started rolling The VIL grant is from IRA. It's basically a lot of support of US industries. Again, I think people don't understand if you kind of allow, if the industry goes elsewhere, We become, America become a relevant country. Like we become almost a slave to foreign powers. So you have to bring manufacturing back to the States. And so to do that,

you have people playing field, you have to provide a lot of incentives to US companies. You have to incentivize building things on the ground here in the United States. Yeah, I think it's very important because people sometimes forget this, especially because I heard somebody point out that a lot of these IRA funds get administered through a state program. So it's not called the IRA. So people don't actually know where it's coming from in many cases. But people forget that this is the future of America. Things are going to be built with batteries.

whether we like it or not. So we don't want to have all of our batteries coming from China because if you are just a buyer of technology from the rest of the world, where are you going to generate your revenue to buy this stuff, or eventually kind of run out of money? And this is this huge branding issue. I really believe this, that people need to start recognizing the branding issue of climate that can stop making it a culture war thing. Yeah, for sure. And I think in general, with solar cells, know first solar survived, but everybody else was massacred.

So if China can be allowed to massacre one industry at a time, nothing left. Exactly. It'll slowly go all over the shores, overseas. And we're kind of in a pinch. So I guess then do you have, I guess, any specific takes or thoughts on, I guess, let's call it the red wave that has come in that, you know, what do you think might happen specifically for the battery industry? Because I know we've got the influence of Elon there a little bit. And it seems as though Trump's cooling his rhetoric a little bit on the EV side of things.

But I've talked to other people who said no matter what, the battery industry has always moved forward, just sometimes more faster than other times. So what is your outlook? My outlook is Republicans are always very supportive of industry, very protective of industries in the States. And that's not a negative thing, it's a positive thing. And so if the industry is great, if industry is something else, it's also great. I think having a strong industrial base and incentivize companies to manufacture in the States is

will bring huge benefits to the country, irrespective of your political affiliation. Yeah, I do hope, again, it's always hard to say because people say, you know, Trump says one thing, but you don't know if he means it. he has obviously a strong competition angle with China is like very core to his being, seems. So I'm hoping that we continue to go on these things and advance and maybe even see some funding for these things. I really hope that's what we get to. Maybe if Doge does clean up some of the extra spending, we'll put it towards...

towards manufacturing batteries here. mean, for sure, if you think about all key technologies, most of the key technologies were developed in the States, but now most of them are produced elsewhere. so over time, becomes harder and harder to innovate if manufacturing is elsewhere because you have to get feedback from manufacturing, what is important for them, why this technology is useful, why it's not. And so having manufacturing back in the States will kind of the innovation cycles. You can innovate much faster. And I think it will be positive for everybody here.

Yeah. I'm really excited for that future. I'm hoping for it. Let's talk about talent a little bit. So there's probably a couple angles I want to go here. First of all, you mentioned that Gene had been kind of an early employee at Tesla. And if you kind of listen to the stories of how Tesla ended up funding their first facility or the early days, like they were always on the brink of bankruptcy, right? But it appears from my perspective, like in my opinion, is the only way they kept going was Elon Musk had enough reputation that he could pull a rabbit out of his hat and convince more people to invest, right?

So to what extent did Gene's experience plus maybe some of your advisors, what role did that play in your fundraising journey throughout? I mean, I would say it's played a role in the beginning. So they have to invest in a strong team, right? An experienced team, if I would start the company as a professor of material science without any experience in industry, they probably wouldn't fund it. If Gene would start a company without science-related company, somebody with strong scientific background, would also be hard to fund.

funding. But nowadays, over time, it's honestly very similar to what you do with large businesses. It's all about revenues, much, you know, how many, how many orders, your orders, know, the profit margins, all these financial metrics, all these financial parameters becoming much more important. And that's why now we have a CFO, Abby and her team is doing the fundraising, right? And, I am myself and other people are mostly in support role. when you

People are doing due diligence to answer technical questions, to support technical aspects of the discussions, but everything is driven by the financial numbers. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's helpful. think it's the early days you have to kind of convince people a little bit. I was curious, I guess, what time did you go out to raise your first VC funding? What was the year, roughly? That was 2011. Okay.

So even then you yourself had raised the money. I'm kind of a little bit surprised by that, that there was that much interest to be able to go out and make it happen. there was no interest in that. It's just to be clear. Because we pitched that we make real estate is expensive here, so we small batteries. I see. That was our pitch. And then we said in the longer term, if the revolution happens, then we use the same technology. I see.

So you demonstrated kind of a beachhead market plus a huge potential future market, assuming things worked. Yeah, that's helpful. The second piece I want to talk about is with regards to your first manufacturing facilities, the bigger ones especially. So once you're getting this going, what was it like to find kind of core talent to, I guess you could say lead the design, the build and the execution of actually running this facility? I know it's not fully up and running yet, but what was that part like? Maybe just to be clear, we had the one...

team who was doing design and built out in another team who would be operating it. And so we typically focused, we did all development from here. But, know, in the meantime, somebody had to execute in Modest Lake. And so we built a kind of senior leadership team from the local talent and some of the people we recruit are absolutely fantastic. They're amazing. And so then they use their own network to do that. And we also partnered with local schools for the workforce development. do a lot of...

kind of outreach activities, we do a lot of community work that helps to bring kind of talent to the plant. you know, initially, you know, it's not that many, maybe a few hundred people are going to be working there, but eventually it's going to be thousands, right? So you have to a pipeline and it's a gradual process for us again, at some point it's actually great that we had to grow gradually, slowly. And so, you know, for the motor slaking phases for the facilities in Alameda, know, roughly like 40 % year over year.

it's not that slow, but it's not super fast. It's not like have to table every year, right? So you can have, you can take time to hire talent, you can be selective. And fortunately for us, especially in Lameda, there are not so many successful startup companies working on clean technologies in Silicon Valley. So there are other people that are interested in that. And so we have a very nice pipeline of candidates that are really top notch. so- What about for some of the key hires, right? I would always, I'd be really curious, like when you guys decided to build this Moses Lake facility,

Did you just kind of with your expertise from having gone through like that small production facility in Alameda, did you guys say, we'll handle this. We'll just hire kind of more junior people to run it and I can do the execution. Or did you find like, I'm going to go recruit somebody who's built factories at a large scale and I'm going to recruit them to kind of be the head of this. Did you have, did you do that or did you just keep the- No, no, I'm clear that writing the factory is not a small deed. like your junior people can run the factories. No, there's a huge responsibility. You have to be very senior to run the factory.

but it's very different skill sets to design equipment for the factory and to ensure the supply chain, to build the whole facilities. And so we work with engineering for that, but we also have a lot of talent. We hired a lot of experts to Alameda, designed and built factories and worked with their suppliers. We have 3000 suppliers implemented on time. And so that's why, know, the timely delivery, we have all the supply challenges, right? And so all our suppliers also had supply challenges.

And so you have 3,000 suppliers. It's not crazy to think that every one of them can be like three months late or five months late and it's going to delay the whole process. So the teams always ensure that we don't delay. So there's always crisis. Every week there's a crisis. last three years, we've the previous crisis. Yeah. Well, I guess in general, where do you tend to recruit from? I'm really curious if they come from the chemical industry primarily or other EV, like battery manufacturing space, like...

Is there like a general pool that you guys tend to... industry, mostly chemical industry. Also chemical industry, Interesting. And then this goes into a little bit of the question you talked about. You already alluded to this with workforce development, but if I was 18 years old going into university right now and I want to work in the battery space, what are some of the, I guess you'd say, trajectories that people should consider going on? You know, the field is very interdisciplinary. And so people who join the battery field, they come from all sort of disciplines like...

The Nobel Laureate who kind of co-invented lithium-ion batteries drawn good enough, he was a physicist, right? But you can also get education in chemical engineering or chemistry or material science or electrical engineering or mechanical engineering. I think this combination of talent makes a huge difference. Even like we have scientists who came from mathematics because they're doing modeling for us. So it's very, very broad. And so as soon as the education is good, as soon as you're good at what you're doing, you can join the kind of...

the field of batteries from all different angles. What is a typical starting position for somebody who, I don't know exactly what, let's say they study chemistry, what is a starting position if they're just out of graduate school? mean, it depends. So typically you want to have a diversity of levels within the company. So some people are very senior, some people are midsenior, some people are junior, right? And so the junior people bring lot of energy, enthusiasm, lot of knowledge, fresh from graduate school.

know, senior people bring a lot of expertise and structure. so, you know, depending on what team they join. So I lead the research and concept development team. And so, you know, we bring people from typically with could be master or PhDs, right? To join our team and they're focusing on overcoming some technical challenges or developing new scientific advances. But you know, there are people in process development, equipment development, so they would do something else. But there is always pipeline of new candidates that are fresh out of school, but they have to.

Brilliant. think that's the only requirement. have to be brilliant and they have to have very good work ethics. Yeah. And so one thing I think is very hard for founders to conceptualize if they're going to go through this scaling process. You can imagine hiring a team, but hiring a team is very different. So would you mind just breaking down like really rough numbers at each round of funding? What was your total head count then associated with that once you had done the hiring push post-fundraise? I mean, like for the first...

Three years, we had just 10 to 12 people, that's all. That was the whole team. Before we moved to Silicon Valley, in 2014, 10 to 12 people. Then we kind of almost gradually, I mean, there was some, it's not perfectly linear, but roughly 40 % year over year. So it didn't change much. So in 10 years, it roughly increased in size by 40 times. And so, I mean, it's hard to kind of calculate for me, but you can imagine, so it's kind of gradual change.

Yeah. So no, no, huge, like, okay, you know, where is our series B? Now we've got to hire, you know, a hundred percent people or something. So it's kind of slowly growing and maybe hypothetically in anticipation of the next funding round, keeping it, keeping it moving. Yeah. I think it's really helpful. A lot of founders seem to struggle going from like that 12 person, 20 person team, maybe to larger numbers. Like it's just a different challenge for being a founder because you're now really, you know, you're, have to pick your battles and be a manager, not, not a, not necessarily always in the weeds, right?

That's It's better also to bring managers with management. Okay. So that's really helpful, I guess, in terms of the talent piece. A couple other things before we wrap up here. What are, guess, some of the broader trends in the battery space, like writ large, that you want to talk about? Things that you say, hey, you know, I know this is coming. I have to be prepared for this. I mean, at the moment, it's difficult. you overall, you know, there is overproduction of batteries in the world and so mostly in China. So the prices are going...

down, which is good for customers, but maybe tough for people developing battery companies, know, producing batteries in the States and Europe. And some of them, you know, may disappear. And that's the reality of it. You know, so there is oversupply. The demand for UVs is also slowing down, so it doesn't help. And then at the moment, you know, in terms of funding, situation is also difficult, right? But, know, at CILA, we are still committed to a better future, better tomorrow.

So all these challenges are not going to stop us. And so I don't think if people, other people are committed to making it happen, shouldn't stop them either. So, you know, hopefully, you know, the man for AVs are going to get picked up again. You know, the low battery cost is probably going to kind of spearhead on support this development, support the transition. But I think also you need, you need factories in this space. need battery factories in the US, not in China to make sure that we don't have to rely on somebody else.

Yeah, I mean, it would make sense that if the tariffs are implemented, that could be helpful for the local producers, Well, depending on the situation, sometimes you can produce Chinese company can make batteries in Canada or can make batteries in Mexico or can make batteries in Korea or there could be some arrangement. And so what I'm saying is like it will be advantageous for the US to build batteries in the US by either European or US by Western companies. Yeah, exactly.

Okay, and then I guess maybe just real quickly, you, you know, say you immediately just like wave a magic wand and you have to go out and start a new company in the battery space, are there any like startup ideas that could be, you know, hypothetically big company ideas or just like, hey, you know, I've got myself and my brother, we want to start a business. Like any startup ideas you have for this battery space? I might not necessarily want to say because we don't know what CILA is going to do in the future. So I'll probably be... Play your cards close to your chest. Fair play.

I mean, if somebody wants to make batteries in the US, that would be fantastic. Would be fantastic for us, would be fantastic for the country. And there are a lot of innovations around battery making, so they can implement these innovations and produce batteries cheaper than elsewhere, more efficient, with less CO2 emission. That would be fantastic for everybody. Are there any, maybe one thing I heard you pick on there, just in case, if there's opportunities, are there any particular challenges with supply chain either feeding into what you guys do or end of life?

that you think that there's areas of opportunity? mean, all lithium ion batteries are going to be recyclable in the future, right? If this battery is 99.9 % recycled, lithium ion batteries will follow the same trend. Some chemists are easier to recycle. Silicon is easier to recycle compared to graphite. Not fundamentally, but because the material is more expensive, it has more capacity. So if recycling costs, I don't know, $7, it makes much more economic sense to do it for silicon compared to graphite.

But also like, know, NCM or NCA chemistry is, you know, much more recyclable compared to LFP chemistry. I don't know if you know the differences or the audience understand the difference. LFP is cheaper because based on iron, phosphorus is also there, but it's much more difficult to recycle. NCM utilizes nickel, maybe some cobalt. So it's more expensive. In the beginning, it offers you better range, know, better performance overall, but you know, you need to recycle it. So, but it's expensive because if you have...

nickel and cobalt, but if you recycle it, then it makes much more economic sense. And so from circularity perspective, think silicon matched with nickel-based, manganese-based cathode would make a lot of sense. Got it. Fair play. Is there any particular, I guess you'd say, resource for Client-In-Tech founders, it could be just a community, book or anything really that you would want to shout out? I I always use Department of Energy resources.

tremendous amount of resources, they hire great talents to put it all together. And I think most people around the world are using them, not only in the US. So that's what I would recommend. Okay. And then any other, guess, throughout your career, any book that you've read or just could be a movie as well, something that you've consumed, some kind of media that has really, really influenced the way you think about the world? Sure. We have lots of books influencing us. I might be highlight a few.

Some of them are not related to honestly, to industry at all. The book by this late Nobel laureates, Why Nations Failed. So two professors, one from MIT, another one from the University of Chicago wrote this book. It's about the importance of kind of independent institutions and incentives on both kind of the state of innovation and prosperity of nations and why, you know, the authoritarian countries that may seem to be very powerful, almighty in a moment.

eventually they fail. That's kind of, you know, it's a very long book. It's very convincing. That's how I would recommend anybody who have bandwidth or who have interest in this, you know, to read it. That was fascinating for me. Another book which I found to be quite, quite interesting at The Upside of Stress by Kelly McDaniel. So she's a professor at Stanford University. And, you know, I think the, so what is most fascinating for me is that your personal perception can change, you know,

can change the impact of things that happen. For example, if you think the stress is bad for you, it will be bad for you. It might negatively impact your physical health, psychological health, mental health. But if you think it's good for you, it will do the opposite. It will be stronger, you will feel better. But I think you can also expand it more broadly. Your perception changes reality. It's kind of insane thing to say, but it is true.

Your perception changes reality and changes the outcome of this reality. And then maybe the one, the last one is, is more about companies or startups. think it's called a five dysfunctions of the team by Patrick Lenzioni. So it's about kind of what, you know, the key dysfunctions that make companies fail. And I think it's also, you know, cut universal, you know, not only to startups, to large companies or any organizations, even to your family. So I think it's like, remember correctly, like.

The lack of trust. If you don't trust each other, things fall apart. The lack of accountability. The same thing. you don't keep each other accountable, things fall apart. It's the avoidance of conflicts. If you don't have conflicts, healthy conflicts, you don't grow. You don't understand in bigger perspective. You don't get, you don't overcome them. And so it also kind of typically leads to failure. Then there is a...

Lack of focus on the results. So sometimes people are more focused on the process than the results, but focusing on the results is so much more important. And the fifth one, lack of commitment. Nice. I'm surprised you remembered all of them. That's great. Yeah. No, Patrick Lanzoni has great books, honestly. That's really good call. I like the ones, especially like the upside of stress idea, because I do believe heavily in perception, right? But awesome, man. Well, this has been really a pleasure. I'm very fascinated by what you guys are doing and the challenges you face.

I appreciate you guys continuing to push forward and making things happen. here's to the next few years and seeing where you guys get to. Thank you so much, Salas.