The Holy Acquisition
Behind the company acquiring Wildcat Discovery Technologies
No jokes for this April Fool’s newsletter, just some of your regular battery news intercalating into your inbox.
At the beginning of March, news caught our eye that veteran machine learning company Wildcat Discovery Technologies had been acquired by Swedish start up Holyvolt for $73 million. Holyvolt has around 30 employees, and uses a screen printing process to make electrodes more sustainably. Wildcat has been around since 2006, using large machine learning and ‘AI’ models long before we were discussing the AI hype in batteries.
This is a very interesting acquisition, particularly in light of the fact that Wildcat raised $90 million in Series D funding back in July 2022, signficantly less than what they were then purchased for. Naturally, we had to get the low-down, and Holyvolt’s CEO & Founder Mathias Ingvarsson was kind enough to sit down with us.
Could you tell us about the name Holyvolt and where the initial company idea came from?
For us, the idea behind Holyvolt has always been quite simple: we want to power the planet with positive energy. From day one, we’ve been focused on rethinking how batteries are made, making them cleaner, more affordable and less dependent on complex global supply chains.
We saw a real opportunity to develop new production processes that could deliver high-performance batteries in a more sustainable and scalable way, particularly with supply chains anchored in Europe and North America.
We founded the company in 2022, but the underlying technology had been in development for over 15 years.
How does the company structure work?
We’re headquartered in Sweden, with R&D in Munich. This gives us a foothold in the heart of European battery activity. And now, with the Wildcat acquisition, we’ve added a strong presence in San Diego, so we can operate as a transatlantic organisation.
Wildcat is a wholly owned subsidiary, but very much integrated into the broader group. What’s important for us is that we’re bringing together deep in-house expertise across both companies, combining process engineering, chemistry, and materials science in a very cohesive way.
Can you tell us about the screen printing you have developed? Is it scalable for gigafactories or targeted at R&D high throughput testing?
Our process is based on screen printing of solvent-free chemistries, which is a significant departure from conventional battery manufacturing. By avoiding the solvent-based slurries conventional electrode manufacturing relies on, we can open up a much more energy efficient and modular production model.
In terms of scale, we’re absolutely thinking beyond the lab. The technology is built for industrial scale, from pilot production through to full manufacturing deployment. From a commercial perspective, we see ourselves as a technology partner across the battery value chain. That means we’re flexible, and we can work through licensing models, partnerships or other tailored approaches depending on what our customers need, rather than focusing on a single route like in-house cell production.
Wildcat Discovery Technologies has been around for 2 decades, what are the main learnings from this company that you’ll be using more widely across Holyvolt?
What Wildcat has built over nearly 20 years is incredibly valuable. The company was built on the idea that if you can run thousands of experiments simultaneously rather than sequentially, you compress years of development into months. That sounds obvious when you say it, and it already is obvious to the pharmaceutical industry. We now see organisations across the battery industry applying these technologies with tangible results.
The High Throughput Platform is up to ten times faster than conventional R&D methods, and it generates the kind of structured, high-quality datasets needed to accelerate development while reducing risk and cost. What we’ll be applying more broadly is that culture of data-first development for materials, plus for how we think about process optimisation too.
Are there any successful examples of the Wildcat discovery tool, particularly that would be relevant to the Holyvolt processes?
I have to be a bit careful here because so much of Wildcat’s work is confidential, that’s the nature of doing deep R&D for OEMs and Tier 1s who aren’t exactly keen to advertise what they’re working on. What I can say is that Wildcat holds more battery patents than any other company in the US, which gives you a sense of the output. And the cobalt- and nickel-free cathode materials are something I’m particularly excited about in the context of Holyvolt’s processes. They align directly with our goals around cleaner chemistry and supply chain independence.
Relatedly, has Wildcat made cathode materials at scale for partners? Are you acquiring cathode synthesis expertise here?
Yes. And this was one of the things that made the acquisition feel so right. Materials synthesis at scale is a real and active capability at Wildcat. They operate a pilot manufacturing line capable of producing cathode powders at the 100 kg level and build cells up to 20 Ah. So, we’re not only gaining discovery capabilities, but also very practical expertise in materials synthesis and early-stage production. This is a critical part of what makes this acquisition so compelling for Holyvolt.
Our screen-printing and water-based process technology is designed to be scalable; being able to pair it with a partner that has proven cathode synthesis capability means we can move from molecular discovery all the way through to pilot-scale production within a single integrated group.
That eliminates a bottleneck that has historically slowed the battery industry down enormously.
Is the aim to test a broader variety of materials or streamline better testing with machine learning?
It’s really both, and the two are interconnected. You run thousands of experiments in parallel, which gives you breadth. But Wildcat’s platform is designed to produce terabyte-scale, structured datasets, which is what makes the machine learning actually useful. Each cycle of experiments informs the next one more intelligently. So, it is not a choice between breadth and speed. The platform delivers both, allowing us to expand the scope of what we test, while also accelerating how quickly we learn and optimise.
Will the Wildcat tool allow study of processes as well as materials?
That’s one of the things I’m most excited about, actually. Historically, materials development and process development have been done in separate silos, and the gap between the two is often where promising technologies fall apart.
By bringing Wildcat’s discovery platform together with our process technology, we can start to study how materials behave within our specific manufacturing environment, not just in isolation. That’s a fundamentally different way of working. A material that looks great in a coin cell might behave very differently when you’re running it through a screen-printing process, so being able to close that loop quickly and iteratively is genuinely valuable.
How is Holyvolt funding this acquisition?
It was a $73 million deal, structured as a mix of cash, stock and deferred milestone-based payments. We had just closed a €20 million funding round, which gave us the foundation to move on this. One thing worth mentioning is that several of Wildcat’s existing investors chose to roll their proceeds back into Holyvolt. I think that says something, these are people who know Wildcat inside out, and they decided they’d rather be shareholders in what we’re building together. That kind of conviction from people with full information is always a good sign.
It sounds like a pretty great deal for the team at Holyvolt, and hopefully we will see some great output from this neat discovery-testing-process-material synergy from God’s own energy company.
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