Aachen, Germany-based cylib, a sustainable end-to-end battery recycling firm, announced on Wednesday that it has raised €55M in a Series A funding round in equity financing.
The latest funding was co-led by World Fund, and Porsche Ventures, with participation from Bosch Ventures, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, and NRW.Venture.
Existing investors Vsquared Ventures, Speedinvest, 10x Founders, and established business angels, also participated.
Notably, cylib’s funding round is the first venture co-investment from industrial giants Porsche and Bosch in Germany.
The round, which is the largest round ever raised by a European battery recycling company, was completed less than 24 months after the company started operations.
Fund utilisation
The German company plans to use the funds to expand its proprietary technology by scaling up its operations at an already-secured brownfield industrial facility in Germany.
With a team of over 60 professionals, the company plans to use the funds to make key hires.
To date, the company has raised around total funding to €74M.
Lilian Schwich, CEO of cylib, says, “The funding round we announced today will empower us to embark on our next phase of expansion and deepen existing collaborations, as we grow our next-generation battery recycling at an industrial scale. The past year-and-a-half has been a truly remarkable journey of growth, and we are immensely grateful for the trust of our partners and the successful projects we have conducted together. We look forward to offering our superior technology to even more customers and partners.”
The demand for battery recycling is increasing due to the rapid growth of electric vehicles.
According to Fraunhofer ISI, the volume of lithium-ion batteries to be recycled in Europe will reach 2.1M tonnes by 2040.
To meet the rising demand for battery materials and ensure resilient battery supply chains in Europe, locally available raw materials are essential.
cylib: End-to-end battery recycling
Founded in 2022 by Lilian Schwich (CEO), Paul Sabarny (CTO), and Dr. Gideon Schwich (COO), cylib is a research-based company that offers proprietary technology for end-to-end recycling of lithium-ion batteries.
The company’s proprietary end-to-end recycling technology was developed over several years of research at the renowned RWTH Aachen University.
It enables every component in a lithium-ion battery to be recycled, making it the only company on the market to offer clients a way to recover all elements from production scraps, EVs, or micro-mobility batteries.
The company claims to have outperformed long-awaited industry break-even points by reaching a recycling efficiency of> 90 per cent while reducing the environmental footprint (GHG-potential) of the recycling process due to cylib’s water-based Lithium and Graphite recovery by 30% in comparison to competitors.
Last year, the company initially raised €11.6M in seed funding, which enabled the successful delivery of a pilot line in September 2023.
Since then, cylib has completed battery recycling projects for automotive OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and refineries.
The investors
World Fund is a Europe-focused climate venture capital fund that invests in scalable businesses with significant climate performance potential (CPP).
The focus is on the sectors with the greatest need for decarbonisation technologies: energy, buildings, manufacturing, transport, food, agriculture, and land use.
Danijel Višević, General Partner at World Fund, says, “cylib is a role model for the lightspeed industrialisation of world-leading climate tech research coming out of Europe. This company has created a market-leading, highly efficient battery recycling process that offers real climate gains, and which is already delivering for major clients – a huge feat for a business launched not even two years ago. This is the still missing piece of the emerging battery value chain for the decarbonisation of mobility and energy.”
Since its foundation in 2016, Porsche Ventures has been tasked with investing within selected fields of fascination: Car & Mobility, Intelligent Enterprise, Sustainability, and Beyond.
Within that, Porsche Ventures has been able to build a diverse portfolio of more than 50 companies ranging from topics within the fields of battery technology, and energy transition to digital lifestyles, space-tech, enterprise AI, and other promising future technologies.
Patrick Huke, Partner and Head of Porsche Ventures says, “We at Porsche Ventures are thrilled to co-lead the Series A financing round of cylib together with climate tech VC World Fund. cylib is a perfect example of how leading scientific research can be commercialised at a rapid pace. We are excited to partner with the cylib team to industrialise their innovative end-to-end recycling process with the aim of driving the European Raw Material Ecosystem to become more sustainable and resilient. This fits perfectly to our sustainability ambitions and helps in striving for a decarbonised and circular supply chain.”
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/germany-based-cylib-raises-55m/
