Lyten buys Cuberg plant in Lithium-Sulfur boost

Lyten in the US is to acquire a local Cuberg battery plant being sold off by Northvolt.

The deal will see the Cuberg lithium metal battery factory in San Leandro manufacture up to 200 MWh of Lithium-Sulfur batteries to meet growing demand from defense, drone, micromobility, and other energy storage applications. Cuberg’s lithium-metal battery production equipment and facilities will be converted to manufacture lithium-sulfur, adding to Lyten’s current semi-automated production in San Jose. This follows the announcement of the first lithium-sulfur battery megafactory in October that will come online in 2027.

Lyten will also acquire Cuberg’s battery cell development and invest up to $20m in 2025 as part of an ongoing plan to expand the San Leandro and San Jose facilities. San Leandro commercial production is intended to begin in the second half of 2025.

This comes as Northvolt has dramatically scaled back its investments and lithium ion battery manufacturing in Europe. Northvolt had bought US-based Cuberg in 2021 and has integrated its technology into its development centre in Sweden.

“The acquisition of additional manufacturing capacity for Lithium-Sulfur is in direct response to fulfilling customer demand more quickly,” said Dan Cook, Lyten’s CEO and co-founder. “Our customer pipeline has grown nine-fold since the start of 2024 and now numbers in the hundreds of potential customers. We are now working to allocate capacity from both San Leandro and our previously announced Reno gigafactory.”

“The facility further demonstrates our strategy for building US leadership in the manufacturing of next generation batteries and will enable Lyten to scale our domestic materials supply chain more quickly,” said Celina Mikolajczak, Lyten’s Chief Battery Technology Officer.

Batteries produced at San Leandro will be sourced by a US materials supply chain with out the need for nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite, making the batteries US National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) and Inflation Reduction Action compliant.

“The speed of Lyten’s manufacturing expansion represents a timely move to assist the U.S. Department of Defense and the military services in complying with the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which mandates the acquisition of domestic batteries,” said Cook.

“Lithium-Sulfur is a highly manufacturable battery that can be produced on standard lithium-ion equipment used throughout the world today. We intend to use this advantage to continue to opportunistically expand Lithium-Sulfur production though the acquisition of lithium-ion assets,” added Mikolajczak.

Lyten’s Lithium-Sulfur battery cells have up to 40% lighter weight than lithium-ion and 60% lighter weight than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.

Strategic investors in Lyten include Stellantis, FedEx, Honeywell, and the Walbridge Group. Earlier this year, Lyten announced it has partnered with leading defense manufacturer AEVEX Aerospace to demonstrate lithium-sulfur battery powered unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) that are fully compliant with the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act’s (NDAA).

The battery cells were selected for testing aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025.