Sila's fresh $300 million round will help it make enough of its silicon-carbon anode material to power more than 100,000 EVs.

Sila, a startup producing next-generation battery materials, on Tuesday announced $300 million in new funding.

The company previously raised $1.3 billion and was valued at close to $2 billion two years ago, according to PitchBook. It has 400 employees.

The California-based startup has developed a silicon-carbon material that replaces graphite traditionally used in the anodes of lithium-ion batteries, delivering better performance and significantly higher energy capacity.

Last fall, Sila opened its manufacturing facility in Moses Lake, Wash. — the first automotive-scale silicon-anode plant for both the company and the nation. It’s shipping sample anode material from the facility to a variety of customers.

The cash infusion will help fund a planned expansion of its Central Washington operations.

The current plant has a production capacity of about 2 gigawatt-hours of anode material, which, depending on its application, could supply 20,000 to 50,000 EVs. The expanded facility could increase that volume to tens of gigawatt-hours.

EV sales cooled in the U.S. after President Trump returned to office and federal support for battery-powered cars waned. But new models are still entering the market and demand is growing for other battery applications.

“Anything that AI is touching right now is driving tremendous need for better batteries,” said Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO.

That includes drones, hardware deployed in outer space, robotics, autonomous vehicles, wearable consumer devices, and batteries used at AI data centers. All of those uses require higher performing batteries, he added.

It’s also essential that the U.S. bolster its domestic manufacturing of battery components given national and economic security concerns, Berdichevsky said. Because while the U.S. is racing to strengthen its AI sector, if the nation has to import all of the equipment and hardware systems that it needs, “you really don’t have an AI industry,” he added.

Sila’s round was led by Atreides Management and Sutter Hill Ventures. It was joined by 8VC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, and other existing and new investors.

Moses Lake is also home to Group14, which is producing its own version of a silicon anode material. The Washington-based competitor to Sila has put its U.S. manufacturing on pause as it focuses on its South Korean plant, which is delivering commercial-scale volumes of material for customer performance testing.

Editor’s note: Story updated at 9:25 a.m. July 21 to add comments from Gene Berdichevsky and to clarify that the next phase of manufacturing expansion will increase production into tens of gigawatt-hours of material.

Built-in batteries put a timebomb inside devices, with especially the calendar aging feature of Li-ion chemistries setting a hard limit on when you’ll have to toss the device or figure out a way to replace the battery somehow. Here the EU’s Battery Regulation policy with the 2027 implementation of the user-serviceable battery requirement provided a lot of hope. Now six new categories of exemptions are diminishing what could have been a bonanza of easy repairability.

Most notable here are smartwatches, fitness trackers, wireless earbuds and other so-called ‘wet devices’, which as GSMArena also notes is an area where having a user-replaceable battery might affect features like being water-resistant. Something which is also relevant for e.g. outdoor wireless speakers. There’s also a new exemption for smartphones, where if its battery retains at least 83% of its original capacity after 500 charge cycles, battery replacement has to be only replaceable by professionals. Which is probably code for ‘glue, hotplates and prying tools’.

Considering just how daft of an idea built-in batteries are, this is somewhat disappointing to see. While it’s understandable that ‘wet devices’ get such broad exemptions, it should be noted here that advanced technologies like gaskets are neither complicated nor expensive. You can even hand the average user a tube of RTV silicone and let them go to town on a part in the happy knowledge that there’s never such a thing as ‘too much’ RTV silicone.

It is likely that there was some pressure from the industry on the EU to not change too much, but at the very least us happy few in the EU will be getting a new Nintendo Switch 2 with easily replaced battery in both the main unit and its controllers. For the average rechargeable device you keep kicking around the house this should also still apply as long as its manufacturer cannot squeeze it into one of these exemption categories.

The Right to Repair battles shall continue.

A sodium-metal battery reached a four-minute laboratory rate, but its strongest lifespan figures came from slower and smaller tests. The pouch-cell results show why EV use remains a long way off.

US homeowners have embraced home batteries in record-breaking numbers in early 2026, spurred on by state incentives while seeking to offset rising residential electricity costs. The trend could even unlock a more flexible energy supply for power grid operators and even AI data centers.

New home battery installations reached a record 673 megawatts of energy storage in the first quarter of 2026, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That trend was driven by states with high electricity prices that have implemented policies to incentivize home battery installation, Bloomberg News reported.

This residential battery trend stands out as a natural next step for states that have already successfully boosted rooftop solar adoption among homeowners, given how batteries enable homeowners to use stored solar energy at night. California and Hawaii accounted for the majority of new residential battery storage, while Texas and Arizona also saw significantly higher numbers of installations.

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