Skeleton Technologies raises 37.6 million euros

Ellex in Estonia advised Skeleton Technologies, a technology leader in supercapacitor and energy storage, on raising 37.6 million euros of equity investments.

Round D3 investments will be used to scale-up the supercapacitor production in Saxony, Germany to meet customer demand and to continue the development of new battery technologies based on curved graphene.

“This new funding is one of the milestones allowing us to execute our long-term strategy and not to lose any speed in scaling up our manufacturing to service the rapidly growing customer demand,” said Taavi Madiberk, CEO and co-founder of Skeleton Technologies. “Although our focus is on scaling up, we continue to invest strongly into R&D. We firmly believe that, to meet the Paris climate targets, additional fundamental innovation in energy storage is needed and this will be executed by deep tech companies”, he added.

The oversubscribed round included top European entrepreneurs who have built some of the most successful tech companies in Europe, coupled with industry specialists. The latest funding was led by Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus from Taavet+Sten, joined by a group that included members of the founding team of Adyen, the Dutch fintech company, Benqt Wahlqvist, co-founder of battery charging specialist CTEK, Nidoco AB and EIT InnoEnergy. The Round D3 brings total investments into Skeleton to over 200 million euros.

“Skeleton Technologies’ supercapacitors can be charged in a matter of seconds and have 1 million charge cycles. This, coupled with high efficiency, has made them the supplier of choice for blue-chip companies from automotive to grid and industrial applications” said Taavet Hinrikus. He added: “It´s exciting to support the company’s growth through its next phase of supercapacitor manufacturing scale-up and continued development which will see their core materials and technology used in new battery products. I am convinced that the next generation of battery technologies – the ones that will allow us to achieve our climate goals – will be enabled by materials innovation. Skeleton’s team has a proven track record of bringing R&D to real-life products, which is why investing in the company was an obvious choice for me.”

“As the battery and energy storage market is currently completely dominated by Asian companies, Europe has no choice but to step up and accelerate if it wants to claim the leadership in the key enabling technologies for the race to net zero. We must not only invest in the technologies that already work today but in the breakthrough innovations we need for many decades to come,“ explained Taavi Madiberk.

The Ellex team who advised the client was led by Partner Ermo Kosk.

Skeleton Technologies is the global technology leader in supercapacitor energy storage in automotive, transportation, grid and industrial applications. It was recently named in the prestigious 2015 Global Cleantech 100, which recognises top private companies in the clean technology sector.