Group14 is building a battery material factory in Sagunt

Group14, the U.S.-based battery material manufacturer specializing in silicon anodes, will now also produce in Europe. The commitment to establish a manufacturing site in Spain is directly linked to a new capital injection — specifically, from a European investor.

Production at Group14 is already underway in South Korea.

Image: Group14

Group14 is a battery material developer specializing in silicon anodes, headquartered in Woodinville, Washington state. Porsche is considered one of the key investors and partners of this U.S.-based startup. Following a previous funding round in the summer of 2025, during which Porsche also contributed again, the company now announces the completion of another capital increase. Specifically, it involves 150 million euros from an unnamed investor.

What’s truly interesting is that in exchange for this capital increase, Group14 has committed to expanding its so-called “SCC55” production to Europe. The location has already been chosen: the company “selected Sagunt in Spain as the site for the next industrial-scale production module with an initial capacity of 10 GWh,” Group14 states. By establishing a production facility in Spain, it aims to position its battery materials “right next to the supply chains of the major European OEMs.”

In this context, PowerCo immediately comes to mind when thinking of Sagunt. As is well known, this Volkswagen subsidiary is building one of its large battery cell factories in this city. In the future, the plant is set to become part of a joint venture project involving Gotion High-tech. Group14 could naturally play a role in Volkswagen’s future battery ecosystem due to its close ties with Porsche. Therefore, the investor mentioned here might originate from within the Volkswagen group or its surrounding companies. This conclusion is plausible, but it has not been confirmed.

Either way, Group14’s material labeled SCC55 has already achieved “commercial success in applications such as smartphones, drones, hypercars, and eVTOLs,” according to the developers. It is also set to be used in batteries for electric vehicles in the future. The main feature of this new material is that it allows for the use of silicon-carbon anodes instead of the conventional graphite in lithium-ion batteries.

This battery component is set to be produced in Spain at a capacity of 10 GWh per year going forward. This would raise the “short-term total production capacity” to 40 GWh, according to a accompanying statement. In addition to a commercial pilot plant in Woodinville that has been operational since 2021, Group14 operates another facility in Sangju, South Korea (with 10 GWh capacity), and plans to open two 10-GWh plants in Moses Lake, Washington, by 2027. The company aims to “build production capacities in the range of hundreds of gigawatt-hours” over the next decade, it says.

Rick Luebbe, CEO and co-founder of Group14 Technologies, summarized: “To truly transform the energy industry, battery material manufacturers must be located where the batteries are produced. Our expansion into Spain reflects our vision: to remain flexible, manufacture near key customer centers, and maintain secure, local supply chains.”

With the new funding commitment of over 150 million euros (equivalent to 169 million dollars), the total amount raised in Group14’s Series D funding round now exceeds 665 million US dollars, according to the company. The startup had already raised 463 million dollars from various investors by 2025. Thus, the Series D round lasted nearly one and a half years.

Regarding Group14’s close ties to Germany, here’s an additional insight: In 2022, Porsche became an investor in the startup for the first time as part of that round of Series C financing, contributing $100 million to a total funding amount of $400 million at the time. As part of this, Porsche also announced that Group14 would go on to supply battery materials to Porsche’s battery subsidiary, Cellforce. However, Porsche announced later that year it would shut down Cellforce entirely.

Meanwhile, in 2023, Group14 acquired the German company Schmid Silicon, which operates a facility in the Industriepark Schwarze Pumpe on the border between Saxony and Brandenburg to produce monosilane gas, a key precursor for the silicon battery technology developed by the U.S. company.

In 2025, V4Smart—the battery subsidiary of Varta, which was acquired and renamed by Porsche—introduced its second-generation battery cell and announced that it would use the new anode material from Porsche’s subsidiary Group14 in this cell. Shortly before that, the German battery cell manufacturer CustomCells also signed a supply agreement with Group14, but the company went bankrupt just a few months later.

Another important partnership for Group14 in Germany is with the chemical company BASF: Both firms introduced a market-ready silicon anode solution in spring 2025, which is also intended to replace graphite in lithium-ion batteries. This solution combines BASF’s binder Licity 2698 X F with Group14’s advanced silicon anode material SCC55.