Silicon battery materials have mostly been a Washington state story. Group14 is now taking the chemistry to Valencia’s industrial belt.
The Woodinville company closed a €150M ($169M) extension to its Series D, lifting the round past $665M and funding a 10 GWh manufacturing site in Sagunto, Spain. A single undisclosed investor put up the equity.
Sagunto becomes Group14’s first industrial-scale plant in Europe and the third factory in its buildout, code-named BAM-4. The company says its near-term manufacturing network will reach roughly 40 GWh once everything is running.
Three factories, three continents
Sangju, South Korea already hosts a BAM-3 plant that is operational, ramping output, and built for 10 GWh initially. Washington’s BAM-2 sits at Moses Lake, with two modules scheduled to come online during the first half of 2027 and contribute a further 20 GWh. Since 2021 the original pilot line in Woodinville has been supplying SCC55 to over 150 buyers.
Spain was the obvious European answer. It is the continent’s second-largest car manufacturing country, which puts a materials plant close to the OEMs and cell makers that buy it. Group14 chief executive Rick Luebbe, co-founder of the company, argues battery material producers have to sit where the batteries are actually made, and that local capacity tightens supply chains that have grown uncomfortably concentrated.
The material is the product
Group14’s SCC55 blends silicon into a carbon scaffold so anodes hold more lithium than graphite allows. It already turns up in smartphones, drones, high-performance vehicles and eVTOL aircraft.
The demand signals the company is underwriting go well beyond cars. Data center backup, aerospace and defense power are all on its target list, and the technology portfolio rests on more than 200 patents, which is why a Spanish factory justifies a nine-figure cheque before a single kilo ships.
