The battery game has always had one problem, it runs out. Not just the juice, but the infrastructure, the raw materials, the domestic reliability. And while most folks stayed busy pitching buzzwords and shiny decks to Band-Aid the issue, Nascent Materials went underground. Lab coats on. Silence mode. No leaks. Just build.
Now, they’ve emerged from stealth, and not with some recycled pitch about “next-gen” anything. They showed up with patents, production, and product already in customers’ hands. No vapor. Just voltage.
Big congrats to Chaitanya Sharma, Co-founder and CEO of Nascent Materials, for securing a $2.3M seed round led by SOSV, with New Jersey Innovation Evergreen Fund and UM6P Ventures backing the vision. That’s deep-tech capital betting on industrial substance, not startup theater.
Let’s talk origin story, because this isn’t your average founder journey. Chaitanya Sharma’s résumé reads like the manufacturing Avengers: Tesla Gigafactory 1 in Nevada? Built it. iM3NY’s battery gigafactory in New York? Ran it. After navigating those high-voltage chessboards, he didn’t walk away with burnout, he walked away with blueprint-level insight into where this industry cracks. Spoiler: it’s in the cathode. Always has been.
That’s the hole Nascent Materials is patching. Using a patented pCAM-free thermo-fusion synthesis process, they’re bypassing the bloated, expensive, upstream dance of precursor cathode active materials. Translation? Lower cost. Higher performance. Zero waste. No dependence on geopolitically dicey inputs. In a world where 90% of cathode production still bows to overseas supply chains, Nascent is handing the U.S. its first real shot at battery material independence.
And they’re not just talking. They’re doing. They’ve built a bench-scale production line in Newark, shipping multi-kilo batches to U.S. battery manufacturers. Their first samples? Already in customer labs. Their tech? Capable of boosting cathode energy density by 12% while slashing costs by 30%. All while staying compatible with U.S. feedstocks and recycling streams. That’s not incremental, that’s industrial rebellion.
Through their partnership with UM6P Ventures, Nascent’s building bridges to Morocco’s STARTGATE innovation hub, tapping into upstream raw materials and global expansion strategies. Smart. Strategic. Surgical.
The LFP and LMFP markets are surging toward a $124B opportunity by 2032, and Nascent’s carving a lane through the middle of it. Think energy storage for EVs, data centers, defense, and aviation, wherever lithium flows, Nascent shows up with a better way to make the part that matters most.
To the investors who saw this early: well played. To the rest of the industry still waiting for “the right time,” the time was yesterday.
This is how the next chapter of domestic battery dominance gets written. With iron, phosphate, and nerve.
