GraphEnergyTech, no silver needed and Aramco is back in
Up to £3 million is what one company is raising to take gold and silver out of electrodes. The replacement is a black paste made of graphene.
The company is GraphEnergyTech, a spin-off of EPFL and University of Cambridge, and a winner of Venture Kick, the philanthropic initiative for Swiss startups. It announced the first close of its seed round on 6 November. Aramco Ventures is among the committed investors, as it was in the company's earlier £1 million pre-seed round, which it led. Existing shareholders and new business angels, including investors from Canada, joined this one.
The product: highly conductive carbon- and graphene-based inks and pastes for electrodes. Carbon lets the company make electrodes without gold and silver, so manufacturers depend less on volatile metal markets. It began with solar panels and is now moving into fuel cells, heating technologies and printed electronics.
The research behind it comes from perovskite pioneer Michael Grätzel at EPFL and the labs of the Cambridge Graphene Centre.
Co-founder and CEO Thomas Baumeler says the money will help "accelerate the development and commercialisation of our graphene-based electrode technologies."
What this round pays for is the step after the lab: technology development, industrial validation and commercialisation, with industrial partners in several countries. The company has also received grants from Horizon Europe, Innovate UK and Innosuisse. The seed round is still open, up to £3 million in total.
Zayed Alamri of Aramco Ventures says the technology could "reduce the reliance on expensive metallic electrode technologies."