Circu Li-ion, a European battery upcycling company with a mission to save the planet by boosting the value of each battery, announced it has raised €8.5 million in a seed round.
The recent funding includes €4.5 million in equity, which was led by BonVenture and saw additional backing from an undisclosed group of battery, AI, and industry experts, and a significant participation of the company’s management team. The investment is complemented by €4 million in grants from the EICA (European Innovation Council Accelerator) and collaborations with recyclers and OEMs — demonstrating their devotion to a greener future.
Circu Li-ion’s vision of bringing urban mining to life through an automated upcycling platform for end-of-life batteries is reinforced by the support and confidence of its new strategic partners. Contracts with market-leading OEMs from the Electronic Vehicles (EV), Micromobility, and Power Tools industries, alongside leading European recyclers, add invaluable expertise that will support Circu Li-ion’s further development. These partnerships highlight the collective goal of facilitating a circular battery value chain in Europe, especially considering the EV market’s surge to become a trillion-dollar market by 2030.
Antoine Welter, CEO & Co-Founder of Circu Li-ion, said: “We’re happy to double down on our development speed, turning this fresh funding into smarter, data-focused solutions that make battery recycling economically and ecologically viable for everyone. For this, the key is a great team – we will further invest in our team and double our size of currently 34 colleagues within the next twelve months.”
Founded in 2021, Circu Li-ion holds a clear commitment to sustainability and recycling benchmarks with the ultimate goal of upcycling 3 billion batteries by 2035. Accordingly, the new funding will enable them to enhance its upcycling platform, amplify its proprietary battery data library, bolster collaborations with EV OEMs and recyclers, and unlock new capabilities in the battery recycling value chain.
Xavier Kohll, CTO & Co-Founder of Circu Li-ion, commented: “We are evolving our products with the agility and adaptability the swift-moving battery market demands. It’s more than creating relevancy – it’s about pioneering flexible solutions that carve out new possibilities for cleaner battery recycling.”
Alongside the company’s functional growth, Circu Li-ion plans to expand its main production facility near Karlsruhe, Germany to 2,000 m2, while further growing its Berlin satellite office.
Nikolaj Klebert, Investment Manager of BonVenture, added: “Since the first contact with the outstanding team, we have been enthusiastic about the highly dynamic environment of battery up- and recycling in which they have occupied the field very early and taken a dominant role. Circu Li-Ion puts a stop to the current destruction of value in the form of a technically sophisticated and particularly innovative solution, thus unlocking previously inaccessible potential down to the level of the individual cell. This is what makes a particularly high level of sustainability possible in the first place and makes an important contribution to the transformation of many industries.”
