Moment Energy raises $40 million to meet “unlimited energy demand” with electric vehicle batteries

Moment Energy CEO Edward Chiang believes North America’s energy demand is infinite — and his startup has the solution.

The company, which is headquartered in Canada and the United States, is taking a new approach to reusing electric vehicle batteries, Chiang told TechCrunch. The company’s approach is special, he said, because of its dual focus on safety and modularity.

Investors seem to agree. Moment Energy announced Tuesday that it has raised a $40 million Series B funding round, bringing its total funding to more than $100 million. The round was led by Canadian venture capital firm Evok Innovations, with additional funding from grocery retail fund W23, joining existing investors Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm funded by the CIA.

In Chiang’s view, North America’s electrical grid is in a losing race to keep up with this energy demand, driven by an increasingly harsh climate, the rise of electric vehicles, and the data center boom. So far, he says, Chinese companies have mostly met that demand — amounting to about 72% of the global market, according to BNEF — adding a national security issue to the picture.

Moment Energy addresses this by taking battery packs from electric cars, stripping away automakers’ battery management systems, and writing their own software to manage the packs. It then aggregates the battery modules into larger grid-scale storage solutions that can host a broad mix of battery chemistries, allowing customers to take advantage of future developments in technology while minimizing downtime if a particular module fails.

Most importantly, Moment Energy does all of this with UL certification, making it the first company to recycle batteries with a stamp of approval from the safety organization, Chiang said.

Other companies reusing electric vehicle batteries for long-term storage often claim to test their products according to UL certification standards, but never actually obtain the certifications, which require the use of specific components, Chiang said.

“What most other second lives [battery] “Companies are now trying to say, ‘Let’s just push to make UL certification for Second Life easier, because it’s impossible to get UL certification, as it stands right now,’” he said. “But at Moment, we say that’s not true. We got it.

UL certification may seem boring, but Chiang said it can make a difference not only when it comes to safety, but also in how these energy storage products are secured.

He claimed (without naming it) that other energy storage companies would leave the automaker’s battery management system intact on reused batteries, essentially tricking the packaging into thinking it’s still on the road to coax the right amount of discharge.

This could make these storage solutions uninsurable or very expensive to insure, Chiang said. He pointed to the participation of Liberty Mutual’s venture arm in Moment Energy’s Series B as evidence that his company’s solution is the right one.

“Maybe as engineers, or as consumers, we think this is interesting,” he said. “Actually, fire inspectors don’t think this is interesting. And the automakers don’t think this is interesting. You can imagine if — I really hope this never happens — but if the battery catches on fire, the fire inspector will say, ‘Oh, hey, there’s a Tesla battery management system here, or there’s a Nissan battery management system here,’ and the automaker will say, ‘I never gave anyone permission to hack my safety systems and hijack it.'”

Chiang’s confidence seems to come from several places. Despite its small size — Chiang said Moment Energy has about 72 employees — the company has signed supply agreements with Mercedes-Benz and Nissan. It obtained a $20 million loan from the Department of Energy. It is building a gigawatt plant in Austin, Texas.

Moment also has a growing record of diverse clients, ranging from utilities to industrial companies and — yes, data centers.

But Chiang said he also believes much of Moment Energy’s approach comes from the fact that it is a quintessentially Canadian company, far removed from some of the fundamental motivations in Silicon Valley.

While Chiang said, “All the data center companies have approached us,” he also stressed that his company does not want to fall into a trap by raising money for promises that cannot be kept.

“What we were really thinking about as a whole was just generally staying focused on what we know, what we’re building, and serving real customers, versus trying to sign five- or 10-year deals down the road just to raise money,” he said. “Unfortunately, we see a lot of startups in the Bay Area not trying to deliver the product, but trying to raise the next round.”

“But for us, I think because we have our roots in Canada, a lot of Canadian businesses are focused on building tangible businesses and real, profitable businesses, as well as high-growth businesses, and we’re very realistic when it comes to publishing.”