Recycling tech company Princeton NuEnergy raises $16M in Series A round lead by Wistron Corporation

The recycling technology company Princeton NuEnergy (PNE) has closed a Series A funding of $16M. The round was lead by the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Wistron Corporation which operates a recycling plant in McKinney in Texas, where PNE’s technology is installed.

PNE will use the funds to further increase the capacity of its recycling plant which today operates with an estimated capacity of around 1 tonne per day.

PNE has invented a recovery process based on a low-temperature plasma-assisted separation technology that can recover cathode material in its entirety, so called direct recycling. The company claim to obtain a recycling efficiency (how much of the battery that can be recycled) rate of 95% with ability to reuse both cathode and anode material in battery production.

Wistron Corporation operates through its subsidiary Wistron Greentech a e-waste recycling plant in Texas and has for more than 10 years been a partner to Call2Recycle, the battery stewardship in North America, providing collection and sorting services. PNE has since 2021 operated a pilot plant in this facility which also host hydrometallurgical recovery processes for printed circuit boards.

The Series A funding of $16M adds to previous equity funding of $7M from Greenland Technologies, Shell Ventures, and WorldQuant Ventures. The company has also received research grants from the US Department of Energy of $16.4M.

Other investors in the funding round included Honda Motor Co, GS Futures, and commodity trader Traxys North America.