How our successes so far position Octet for leadership in energy storage’s most exciting frontier

Last month, we shared the exciting news of our recent funding from ICIG Ventures as part of our current investment round. Today, I want to dive deeper into where we’re heading next – and how far we’ve come. I want to discuss three pillars of our business and vision for 2025 and beyond:

• How today, our electrolyte solutions deliver proven impact for battery companies worldwide. 
• Why the battery growth market to watch is grid scale energy storage – and why within that market, non-lithium aqueous technologies are particularly poised for growth.
• Why Octet is uniquely positioned to become a critical player in that “growth markets’ growth market.” 

We’re a partner to the global battery ecosystem.

When we started Octet in 2017, we set out to harness our collective experience in electrolyte advancement to deliver game-changing chemical products specifically for Zinc batteries. By the end of 2024, it was clear we had achieved that aim, based on four factors:

• Quantifiable Impact Our real-world results for customers have included 20% capacity increase, 10% efficiency boost, and doubled operating life.
• Global Reach Our active projects are underway in the US, Canada, and Europe – with advanced-stage discussions underway in those regions and APAC as well.
• Real-World Validation We’re now on the cusp of multiple pilot deployments with our partners – proving not only the value of our electrolytes in the lab, but its readiness for the “real world” market.
• Revenue Growth Our customer commitments reached six figures in 2024. With a strong pipeline and market validation, we project revenue of half a million dollars in 2025. 

We’ve reached a pivotal turning point from chemical IP designer to a go-to R&D and chemicals manufacturing partner to the battery ecosystem. Where we’re focusing next is based on the area where we see enormous growth: non-lithium grid-scale batteries. 

Non-Lithium grid scale batteries are a growth market’s growth market 

According to McKinsey estimates, the market for grid and stationary energy storage – batteries that can support power grids, factories, construction sites and even homes  – is projected to reach at least $120 billion by 2030, with an impressive annual growth rate of 29%. And no wonder: grid-scale batteries are essential for a stable and resilient sustainable energy ecosystem, particularly in mitigating the challenges posed by fluctuating renewable energy sources like solar and wind (often referred to as the “duck curve”).

But while the market is poised for enormous growth, its underlying chemistry is ripe for disruption. Currently, lithium-ion is the leading battery chemistry – a holdover from batteries developed for smaller applications like laptops, mobile phones and electric vehicles. Lithium-ion is unquestionably suited for those devices, but it’s an uneasy fit for grid-scale storage for a number of reasons, including these: 

• Safety Because lithium-ion batteries rely on flammable electrolytes to pack an enormous amount of energy in a small space, they’re highly combustible. While containing the fire risk is manageable in small applications, lithium battery fire safety gets more complicated and expensive at greater sizes. Flammability issues impact everything from production to deployment, with potentially devastating consequences – as we recently saw in the Moss Landing battery plant. At best, these safety issues raise costs. At worst, they are catastrophic.
• Supply Chain Stability For the foreseeable future, battery-grade lithium and associated materials comes from a limited number of sources, largely in geopolitically fraught regions – posing ongoing supply chain risks, price volatility and other challenges. Trade wars over these resources are already escalating.
• Sustainability Lithium batteries remain challenging and prohibitively expensive to recycle – making it an ecologically problematic solution to our current ecological crisis when applied to grid-scale, a point which could hinder broader adoption – or at least make alternatives more attractive to developers and buyers.

For all these reasons, we see a particularly bright future for batteries rooted in alternative chemistries – especially those that combine water with ingredients such as zinc, iron, lead and vanadium. These aqueous batteries eliminate flammability risks, offer supply chain security for local manufacturing and are far easier to recycle, which adds up to long-term prices that will greatly undercut lithium-ion. This is why non-lithium aqueous batteries are poised to take center stage, and we’re already seeing significant traction  – with over $2 billion in project commitments in 2024 based on our industry estimates. 

However, a critical gap remains. Throughout this market, there are very limited options for aqueous electrolyte battery manufacturers looking to make significant advances on their electrolytes. That’s where Octet comes in.

Our New North Star: Become the critical electrolyte source for grid storage’s hottest sector 

While we initially developed our solutions for Zinc batteries in any application, in projects with non-zinc partners we’ve learned that our fundamental approaches and chemistries apply exceptionally well to all “alternative” aqueous electrolyte technologies – not just Zinc alone. 

We also learned that there’s an enormous appetite among these grid-scale companies for an innovation and scale-up partner to help build out their vision, and optimize their electrolyte performance rapidly. In such a new field, there’s tremendous urgency to bring products to market quickly – which makes an innovation partner like Octet a critical player. Optimizing electrolytes is what we know best. That’s why some of the most prominent players in the aqueous battery space have turned to us as their electrolyte development partner.

So while we’ve broadened our chemical focus, we’re sharpening Octet’s market focus to the area with enormous growth potential and where Octet is uniquely positioned to become a critical player. We’re leaning in to a future as the go-to electrolyte developer and provider to the manufacturers who are leading the new wave of non-lithium grid-scale storage. 

We envision a future where the majority of grid-scale storage applications globally are powered by Octet’s advanced chemistry. We’re thrilled that ICIG has chosen to be a partner in our journey to that achievement. And with the tailwinds of our past success and market demand, we’re confident of the road ahead.

There’s still some time left to participate in our current funding round, we’d love to hear from you if you’d like to join that journey as well.

To out best energy future,

Onas