Nth Cycle raises an additional $44M in combined equity and non-dilutive financing

Nth Cycle the US-based battery recycling startup which recently started up its first plant has raised $37M in equity, in a Series B round and additional $7M in non-dilutive funding, not specific in what kind. The financing will be used to support Nth Cycle's commercialization through a new partner testing facility, commercial team growth and headquarters expansion.

The funding follows previous seed and Series A rounds of $3.2M and $12.5M respectively.

The funding was Colorado-based venture captital company VoLo Earth Ventures, Massachusetts-based MassMutual, Caterpillar Venture capital, part of the commercial vehicle maker, and Equinor Venture, the venture capital arm of Norwegian energy company Equinor Venture. Additionally Nth Cycle has recently received $3M in grants from US Department of Energy.

Nth Cycle uses a patented recovery technology based on electric precipitation to process leached black mass into a mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP, also called NCM hydroxide). By applying electricity to anodes and cathodes in a filter system the company has managed to combine an electro-winning process with a filter press technique commonly used for more traditional chemical precipitation processes. This way the MHP can be concentrated and recovered without the use of for instance sodium hydroxide which, depending on leaching solution, will produce sodium sulphate or sodium chloride as a by product.

The company has so far not indicated what happens to the lithium and graphite or which quality it require of the black mass.