Today’s lithium-ion batteries are powering the electric world. But behind the scenes, the supply chain is fragile, costly, and overwhelmingly reliant on China, which produced 77% of the world’s batteries in 2022, with the U.S., in comparison, just 6%.

That’s why SOSV is excited to back Nascent Materials, a HAX graduate rethinking how battery materials are made in America. The company just closed a $2.3M Seed round led by SOSV, with participation from the NJEDA Innovation Evergreen Fund and UM6P Ventures.

Nascent is scaling a new, pCAM-free method for manufacturing cathode materials, one of the most critical (and expensive) parts of a lithium-ion battery. Unlike traditional methods, their approach is modular, flexible, and energy-efficient, designed to lower costs, cut emissions, and enable supply chain resilience by using multiple input materials.

While lithium-ion battery chemistry was originally invented in North America (New Jersey, in fact), China now leads not only in production but also in battery R&D. The country has recently tightened export controls on key battery technologies, leaving the U.S. increasingly reliant on “last-gen” imports to build new domestic facilities. That’s not a sustainable strategy.

Nascent is tackling that head-on. The company is currently building out a bench-scale manufacturing line capable of multi-kilogram batches, with early product already in the hands of potential customers as the demand from U.S.-based battery makers is growing fast.

💬 “Even with proposed rollbacks to battery manufacturing incentives under the current administration, the core challenge of battery production remains: the U.S. must compete with Asia on cost, speed, and scale. Nascent is meeting that challenge with a step-change in manufacturing productivity and a clear path to reshoring battery supply chains. This is exactly the kind of high-impact battery innovation the U.S. needs right now,” said SOSV’s Duncan Turner

The company was founded in 2024 by Chaitanya Sharma, a cleantech veteran with over a decade of experience across gigafactory construction (including Tesla), advanced materials, and supply chain design.