San Diego startup digging into discovering battery materials

San Diego, Calif.-based Wildcat Discovery Technologies is on the hunt to discover better battery technologies, including those for the lithium-ion electric vehicle market.

“We have designed and built high throughput tools to allow our researchers to investigate thousands of battery materials in a short amount of time,” the company’s CEO Mark Gresser told the Cleantech Group at the recent Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovations conference in Redwood City, Calif.

The private company was founded in late 2006, early 2007 with the help of serial entrepreneur and biochemist Peter Schultz, the institute director at the Genomics Institute of Novartis Research Foundation, a professor at The Scripps Research Institute, and founder of companies including Symyx, Affymax, Syrrx, Kalypsys, Phenomix, Ambrx, and Ilypsa.

Schultz pioneered the idea of high throughput chemistry in making drug discoveries, which Wildcat is now applying to the world’s energy needs, Gresser said.

Gresser said the company is synthesizing bulk materials in a high throughput fashion, as well as formulating and putting them into batteries for testing. It has achieved proof of concept with its technology.

“The technology is very scalable,” he said. “The way we are doing this is fast and inexpensive.”

In November of 2006, Wildcat raised its Series A financing from investors including CMEA Ventures, Virgin Green Fund, and 5AM Ventures (see CMEA Capital's on the prowl for cleantech investments). Gresser said the proceeds are being used to develop the company's high throughput discovery platforms and for targeted discovery programs underway. Wildcat has assembled a world class team of scientists and built an internal machine shop in San Diego.

The company aims to make money by selling its patented and unique high throughput equipment, but Gresser said this isn’t its sole business model in the long-term.

In addition, Wildcat is able to provide contract synthesis and research and development services for corporations as well as the U.S. Army, for example. The company has also been contacted by one of the three largest automakers in Japan, who Gresser declined to disclose. He said Wildcat is focused on established its R&D efforts with larger partners and achieving breakthroughs in discovery. The company would own a small part of the IP they discover.

Lastly, the company’s main focus is to find better battery materials and sell those materials.

“We think that will be the main revenue generator for our company in the future,” he said, adding that the company is trying to hit break even by the end of 2010.

It would make money from primary and rechargeable battery materials that have applications in vehicles, cellular phones, computers, medical devices, and the smart grid.

“We can focus our discovery efforts in any of those areas,” he said.

But it’s not alone in its discovery efforts. UK-based Fife Batteries said earlier this year it has a stealthy material it thinks could revolutionize the electric vehicle and consumer battery markets. The company specializes in R&D of low-cost, high-performance lithium-ion materials and cells for the electric vehicle and hybrid-electric vehicle markets, as well as portable electronics (see UK startup’s secret material has big battery potential).

Wildcat is forecasting it could achieve $150 million in revenue in the next five years, from royalties, the materials it is working to discover, and licensing agreements with large companies.

Gresser said the company has enough funding to last until 2011, but will be looking to raise $15 million to $20 million late in the first quarter of 2010 to increase its discovery capabilities, hire additional scientists, and build pilot scale synthesis capabilities.

Wildcat Discovery Technologies is one of 12 potential new investment opportunities the Cleantech Group added to its innovation pipeline this week, available exclusively to members of the Cleantech Network. Members can click here to search the database.

Interested in emerging cleantech innovations? Here are two new international companies added to the Cleantech Group's database this week also looking for funding:

• Olivet, France-based Wirecom Technologies is seeking $12 million for its smartcard technologies that enable and optimize the energy management of consumer equipment in buildings. Founded in July of 2002, the company had a turnover of about €2 million ($3 million) in 2007, marking a 100 percent increase over 2006.
• Kista, Sweden-based TranSiC is seeking $9 million in funding. Founded in 2005, the company develops transistors in silicon carbide for the hybrid electric vehicle industry.

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