Group14 Technologies has closed a €150 million (about $169 million) extension to its Series D, and it’s spending the attention on Europe. The Woodinville, Washington, company said on October 29 that it picked Sagunto, Spain, for its next factory, a plant it calls BAM-4 with an initial 10 GWh module making its SCC55 silicon anode material.
The money came from a single new investor that Group14 won’t name. With the extension, the Series D now tops $665 million. The first part, $463 million, closed in August 2025 and was led by SK Inc., with Porsche Investments, ATL, OMERS, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund and others taking part. Group14 said back then it had raised more than $1 billion in equity overall.
Why silicon, and why it’s hard
Almost every lithium-ion battery today uses graphite on the anode side, the electrode that holds lithium when the battery is charged. Graphite is easy to work with. It just doesn’t hold much: one lithium ion for every six carbon atoms, or about 372 mAh per gram. A silicon atom can bind up to 3.75 lithium ions, which works out to about 3,600 mAh per gram. That’s roughly ten times graphite on paper.
The catch is physical. Silicon swells by more than 300 percent as it soaks up lithium and shrinks again when the battery discharges. Graphite moves by about 10 percent. Do that a few hundred times and silicon particles crack and crumble, the anode loses contact with itself, and the battery’s capacity drains away cycle by cycle.
Group14’s answer is a composite. SCC55 holds silicon in amorphous, nano-sized form inside a hard carbon scaffold with tuned empty spaces built in, so the silicon has room to expand without tearing the particle apart. The company says the material holds up to five times the capacity of graphite and can lift a cell’s energy density by up to 50 percent. It’s sold as a drop-in powder that cell makers can blend with graphite or use to replace it entirely, which matters because nobody wants to rebuild a cell line for a new anode.
Three plants, three timelines
Group14’s near-term map adds up to 40 GWh, but the pieces are at very different stages. BAM-1 in Woodinville is a commercial pilot plant that’s been running since 2021, and it has shipped SCC55 to more than 150 customers. The company names smartphones, drones, hypercars and eVTOL aircraft as uses. ATL, the TDK-owned cell maker, has said Group14 material is already inside millions of its smartphone batteries.
BAM-3 in Sangju, South Korea, is the one actually scaling. It began as a 2021 joint venture with SK. Group14 bought out SK’s 75 percent stake last year, and the 10 GWh module there is running and ramping.
Then there’s Moses Lake. BAM-2, backed by a $100 million Department of Energy grant, was meant to start production in late 2024. That slipped to early 2026, and Group14 laid off U.S. workers in mid-2025, citing shifts in demand and trade uncertainty. The new release puts the two Moses Lake modules (20 GWh together) on track to start producing in 2027. No start date was given for Spain.
Building where the batteries get made
CEO and co-founder Rick Luebbe framed the Spain pick in one line: “battery material producers must be located where the batteries are made.” Spain is Europe’s second-largest car-producing country, and Sagunto is also where Volkswagen’s battery arm PowerCo is building a cell plant. Group14 didn’t name any European customer.
The backdrop is mixed. U.S. support for clean tech has been cut back, EV growth forecasts have cooled, and Luebbe has long pitched silicon as a way around China, which he says supplies more than 90 percent of anode-grade graphite. Rivals are raising too. Sila, Group14’s neighbor in Moses Lake, closed a $300 million round in July to expand its Titan Silicon plant, which started operating last autumn at about 2 GWh a year. Investors are still writing big checks for silicon anodes. Group14’s own target list now runs well past cars, to data centers, aerospace and defense.
The number to watch is 2027. If Moses Lake finally ships at scale, the Spain plan looks like the next step. If it slips again, BAM-4 will look like a long way off.