Lithium-ion batteries rely on a compound few sites want to host: lithium hexafluorophosphate, which is made with hydrogen fluoride, a chemical so toxic that it decides where plants may be built. FluoRok has raised $30M to produce it without the stuff.
Chemistry professor Veronique Gouverneur and Gabriele Pupo started the Oxford spinout in 2022. Its Series A was led by Orano Venture Fund and its manager Supernova Invest, and Bidra Innovation Ventures took part.
Five previous backers renewed their support: BGF, Oxford Science Enterprises, Volta Energy Technologies, the Green Generation Fund and the University of Oxford.
A concentrated supply chain
China turns out roughly 85-90% of LiPF6, Fastmarkets estimates, leaving every battery plant beyond its borders exposed to a strategic problem. Safety rules around hydrogen fluoride have also kept Western capacity slow to add and costly to build.
FluoRok’s mechanical activation route skips the chemical entirely, uses standard equipment and can feed on lower-grade fluorspar or fluoride salvaged from industrial waste. Should it hold at scale, new plants could be sited free of the handling constraints that gate incumbents.
Following $1.3M through Innovate UK’s investor partnerships scheme, an earlier $14M and more than $13M in public funding from the UK and Europe, total equity now approaches $44M.
The competition is not other startups
Orbia’s Koura unit is putting up a LiPF6 plant in Louisiana rated at up to 10,000 tonnes a year, and Do-Fluoride, Tinci, Capchem and Foosung are entrenched. FluoRok’s edge is a process, not a new molecule.
Pupo did postdoctoral work in Gouverneur’s group after training under Nobel laureate Ben List, and Gouverneur took the 2021 Moissan Prize for fluorine chemistry. That is why the science carries the pitch.
The fresh capital goes toward proving the process industrially, the step where most chemistry startups lose the argument.
