B.C.’s Moment Energy lands $40M to scale EV battery repurposing at planned Texas gigafactory

Moment Energy, a British Columbia-based startup repurposing used electric vehicle batteries, has announced a $40 million investment to help fund construction of a massive factory in Texas and more than triple its headcount.

The company, headquartered just outside Vancouver, has now raised more than $100 million in total. Moment Energy is plugging into growing demand for energy storage, which supports data centers, utilities, residential use and industrial operations.

“We are building a new generation of energy infrastructure that can be deployed rapidly, manufactured domestically and powered by existing battery resources,” said Edward Chiang, co-founder and CEO of Moment Energy, in a statement.

Moment Energy launched in 2019, co-founded by Chiang, Sumreen Rattan, Gabriel Soares and Gurmesh Sidhu, all engineering graduates from Simon Fraser University in B.C. The team’s first battery system deployment came in 2021 on Quadra Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island.

The startup plans to break ground this year on a 200,000-square-foot gigafactory outside Austin, Chiang previously told Sustainable Biz Canada. The company expects its workforce to reach 250 once the facility is operational, up from more than 70 today.

Moment Energy is already deploying commercial projects and has customers across North America, including major tech companies and international airports.

The company’s model capitalizes on the natural lifecycle of EV batteries, which can retain 70-80% of their original capacity after roughly 10 to 20 years of use — well past their automotive end of life. Moment Energy disassembles those batteries, tests their remaining capacity and reassembles them into stationary energy storage systems the startup says can operate for up to 30 years.

The company has also secured multiple safety certifications, which it says makes it the only provider that can deploy repurposed battery systems in the built environment “without special dispensations.”

The Series B round was led by Evok Innovations, with participation from Liberty Mutual Investments, W23 Global Fund and Acario, the corporate venture capital arm of Tokyo Gas. Existing investors including Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Voyager Ventures and In-Q-Tel also joined in the round.

“Moment Energy is the only player in the EV battery repurposing industry that has proven safety and scalability are not mutually exclusive,” said Marty Reed, a partner at Evok Innovations, adding that the company is positioned to deploy energy storage systems “at enormous scale.”

Moment Energy operates in a growing field. Other companies focused on battery repurposing include Redwood Materials, which was launched by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, and RePurpose Energy. Battery recycling players include Cirba Solutions, Ascend Elements, Li-Cycle and Ecobat — with Redwood Materials active in recycling as well.

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