Lyten is currently developing lithium-sulphur cells as a cleaner alternative to lithium-ion, with backing from Stellantis, American engineering conglomerate Honeywell, and delivery services provider FedEx.

Analysts see Lyten’s latest move igniting revival hopes for European battery independence after Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in March 2025, making it one of Sweden’s largest corporate failures and sparking a frantic push to find a buyer.

Lyten now wants to restart the flagship Skelleftea plant in northern Sweden and resume deliveries of lithium-ion battery cells in 2026. In July, it acquired Northvolt’s energy storage business in Poland, Europe’s largest, and is targeting automotive, defence, and energy storage markets. As per Lyten CEO and co-founder Dan Cook, several of Northvolt’s former management will be joining Lyten, excluding founder and ex-CEO Peter Carlsson.

International Finance will explain in detail about Lyten, which recently secured more than USD 200 million in additional equity investment to support its acquisitions and expansion plans.

Unleashing Materials Disruption

Lyten specialises in “supermaterial applications,” unleashing extraordinary possibilities in humankind’s journey to net zero and beyond. The start-up’s flagship creation has been its “Lyten 3D Graphene,” a novel decarbonisation supermaterial with the potential to disrupt, transform, and enhance nearly every industry on Earth.

Lyten utilises supermaterials and relentless ingenuity to make “Net Zero” a reality, without compromising performance, profitability, customer experience, and economic growth in developing economies.

As per Keith Norman, Lyten’s Chief Sustainability Officer, to fulfil Lyten’s vision of an “equitable net zero world,” the start-up needs to deliver gigaton CO2 reduction at massive global scale. That will take more than just cleaner products, as people need better-performing products that make simple economic sense and are cleaner.

Lyten’s focus today is on the highest-emitting, hardest-to-abate industries. The start-up claims its supermaterials are highly tunable, which will help it to work closely with leaders from these industries to deliver the specific performance enhancements required to create better applications.

Meet Lyten’s 3D Graphene

In every industry, material limitations act as a barrier to reducing emissions while maintaining profitability. Lyten 3D Graphene acts as a game-changer here, by acting as a decarbonisation multiplier that makes an impact at every level. From the permanent sequestering of carbon in the making of Lyten 3D Graphene, to cleaner product manufacturing, to the expanding decarbonisation impact over time—it’s a win-win-win: for customers, economy, and planet.

The product offers unique resistive, capacitive, inductive, structural, and energy-absorbing properties that can be infinitely tuned to deliver profound results. Lyten creates its 3D Graphene by converting greenhouse gases into solid carbon and hydrogen gas. While the hydrogen gas will be captured for re-use as a clean fuel, the carbon gets permanently sequestered in the form of a three-dimensional supermaterial.

Since the technology is tunable, it can be engineered at the atomic level to bond with other elements on the periodic table. This can optimise thermal and electrical properties, or customise porosity to improve strength and stiffness, decrease weight, and much more.

Powered by Lyten 3D Graphene, the start-up’s “Lithium-Sulphur Batteries” are now serving as the heart of high-performance UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). These batteries act as the ultra-lightweight propulsion to enable longer flights and heavier payloads, while being fully compliant with the NDAA (National Defence Authorisation Act), as the component is fully US-sourced and American-manufactured, keeping out foreign-controlled minerals such as nickel, manganese, cobalt, or graphite from the production process.

Lithium-Sulfur’s performance is perfect to electrify anything that moves. Lyten has begun the multi-year qualification process for electric vehicles, trucks, delivery vehicles, and aviation, apart from meeting near-term delivery targets of commercial-ready batteries for drones, satellites, defence applications, micromobility, and mobile equipment. Lyten is betting big on Lithium-Sulphur as the sulphur cathode and lithium-metal anode have the potential to hold multiple times the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries.

Lyten uses the above-mentioned potential to build a practical battery without heavy minerals like nickel, cobalt, graphite, or iron and phosphorus. The result is up to 50% weight reduction vs NMC and up to 75% weight reduction vs LFP. While it’s impossible to buy a lithium-ion battery whose raw materials don’t go through China, Lyten is trying to eliminate the challenge, instead of trying to rebuild the mining and processing supply chain.

“Lyten Lithium-Sulphur is the world leader in localised sourcing. We are nearly complete in building an entirely local supply chain in the US. Next up is the European Union, then the rest of the world. The world can’t wait for a new chemistry requiring completely new manufacturing. The world is building gigafactories now. Lyten Li-S can be manufactured on the same equipment lines that fill gigafactories today. Well… almost. First, we can eliminate some of the equipment because we don’t need it,” the start-up noted.

Based on the above principle, Lyten converted its Lithium-Sulfur’s automated pilot line in California’s San Jose from a lithium-ion line in March 2025. That pilot line has since then ramped up to more than 90% yields for both pouch and cylindrical cells.

The start-up sees the removal of mined minerals from its battery production process as a great start. It is now eyeing ramping up things further by factoring in 3D Graphene, sourced by sequestering carbon from methane. It will end up resulting in the product powering industrial operations through renewables, ensuring the lowest carbon footprint in the process.

3D Printer Filament And More

Lyten’s “3D Printer Filament” is all about infusing elements like strength, speed, quality, and ease of use when it comes to high-performance 3D printing. The start-up calls the product the marriage between materials science and additive manufacturing, as it remarked, “Powered by Lyten 3D Graphene, our filament is engineered to push the boundaries of what’s possible with 3D printing.”

This is not just another carbon fiber-reinforced nylon—it’s a reimagined composite built with Lyten 3D Graphene, delivering unmatched print speed, quality, strength, and mechanical performance.

Powered by a proprietary formula that enhances the synergy between polymer and fiber, the manufacturers (from fields like consumer electronics, defence, drones, mobility, and motorsport) using 3D printer filament can now print faster, stronger, and with greater precision and design freedom than ever before, without sacrificing print quality or reliability.

The tool prints 20% faster than leading Nylon-CF brands, with fewer slowdowns, something which makes the tool perfect for production environments, rapid prototyping, or time-sensitive builds—functions that require increased productivity and capacity. The 3D printer filament has reportedly outperformed top competitors in blind surface quality tests, in terms of delivering high-resolution detail, with better finish, and consistent results.

Next, we have Lyten’s “3D Graphene Composite Systems,” representing high-performance composite materials (like plastic), that come in handy for applications like ultra-lightweight aircraft, drones, and vehicles.

“Composite materials make up a massive portion of our infrastructure. With our 3D Graphene, polymers and composites can be made lighter, stronger, and more sustainable. These reinforced materials can be applied across countless applications, enabling even the highest-emitting industries on the planet to work towards achieving net zero without compromising performance, profitability, or customer experience. Lyten has successfully reduced weight and plastic usage by more than 50% in certain applications that can be used in the mobility, aviation, and supply chain industries. This is only the beginning of our journey to a stronger, more sustainable material world,” the start-up added.

Let’s conclude with Lyten’s “3D Graphene IoT Sensing Platform,” which consists of paper-thin, dime-sized, electronics-free sensors that can be embedded into nearly any material on Earth. These sensors have non-invasive biosensing, which has the potential to transform healthcare.

The post Start-up of the Week: Post Northvolt acquisition, battery maker Lyten eyes European expansion appeared first on International Finance.

Since copper will have a skyrocketing demand, so will its prices, given the fact that in order to completely transition away from fossil fuels, the global economy will require twice as much copper in the coming years as humanity has mined throughout all of its existence.

In light of the aforementioned context, International Finance will examine Still Bright, a venture based in New Jersey that was founded in 2022. The company claims to have discovered a novel and cleaner method to significantly reduce costs.

What is the start-up up to?

Still Bright has developed a new way to extract copper, which can recover nearly all the copper from typical ores without pre-processing steps that lose up to 20% of the metal. It’s effective enough that it could even be used on tailings, the discard piles that still contain smaller amounts of the metal that mines leave behind.

“Any copper that was lost as waste, we can actually process that and get the copper back,” Allen said.

The start-up recently raised a USD 18.7 million seed round led by Material Impact and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with additional participation from Azolla Ventures, Fortescue, Impact Science Ventures, and SOSV. This investment will be used to boost production from single digits to hundreds of tons per year.

Copper is a critical material for electronics, transmission, construction, and other industries that underpin the 21st-century economic infrastructure—and its demand is projected to increase by 100% in the next ten years. Despite the presence of enough copper in the ground to satisfy this growth, multi-decade permitting timelines, geopolitical risk, declining ore quality, and environmental issues will threaten to cause major shortages and disrupt the copper supply chain when it’s needed the most.

The only way forward is to get more copper out of the ground as fast as possible. The future of copper needs to be safer and easier to permit, more efficient, and more robust to process a wide range of copper sources. Still Bright is looking to address all of these challenges, apart from unlocking expanded copper resources previously considered unrecoverable.

The start-up’s 2025 pilot projects will focus on extracting copper from resources with limited processing options, including “dirty” copper concentrates and raw materials being exported for processing.

Meet The Tech

Bright’s RACER (rapid and complete electrochemical reduction) technology is known for streamlining permitting and unlocking the copper needed to create a robust domestic supply chain, and meet growing demand while providing significant cost savings.

The technology allows its users to extract copper without producing harmful pollution. Where most companies essentially burn away unwanted parts of the ore, releasing much of it into the atmosphere, Still Bright soaks copper-containing ores in a vanadium-based solution, which draws the metal out of the ore. When the vanadium solution is spent, the company’s system uses electricity to regenerate it.

The core technology was inspired by a type of long-duration energy storage known as a “vanadium flow battery.” Inside it, a vanadium-based solution that can be stored in large tanks gets charged and discharged by flowing it past a membrane. Bright’s copper extraction and RACER modules get customised to mine composition and throughput, while leveraging existing mine infrastructure.

Still Bright modules isolate solid copper and continuously recycle the extraction reagent. Sizing and downstream infrastructure may be customised to specific throughput and co-product requirements. The RACER modules are also compatible with a range of feedstocks from high-grade chalcopyrite to dirty and difficult copper ores.

The modular system will be able to be installed at mines spanning a range of sizes. Because the vanadium-based process works so quickly, the company’s equipment is much smaller than a typical refiner for the same amount of copper production.

In the words of CEO Randy Allen, Still Bright’s equipment is 70% to 90% cheaper than typical pyrometallurgical gear. Currently, the company’s process costs about the same to run as a typical refinery, but Allen expects that to change, towards the cheaper side.

Still Bright is planning to build a demonstration unit in 2027 or 2028 that’s capable of producing 500 tons of copper annually. Once completed, it will be a big leap from the current pilot-scale unit. The ultimate commercial-scale system will produce 10,000 tons per year.

RACER wants to become the world’s leading copper production process by outperforming traditional copper processing options and unlocking new sources of the chemical element. While the current copper supply chain ensures efficient copper recovery, it creates a high capital intensity and input sensitivity kind of situation, along with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) challenges. RACER matches copper smelting’s efficiency with major cost reductions and environmental and permitting benefits.

The current copper supply chain often gets slowed by sulphur passivation, which is limited to low-grade copper oxides. Still Bright’s novel reduction avoids sulphur passivation, while recovering 90–99% copper in minutes. Another concern with the copper production process is that the copper is often considered too contaminated to economically or safely recover. It only results in expensive fees and/or poisonous emissions. The start-up addresses the concern by making the process a clean and closed one.

Also, copper production is infamous for its tremendous mine waste, which can’t be smelted or heap leached. Still Bright’s powerful reaction chemistry supports recovery from copper waste streams.

The Road Ahead

Talking about the United States alone, the world’s largest economy has at least 90 million tonnes of economically recoverable copper, but limited processing capacity. With only two operational smelters nationwide, Uncle Sam has been unable to process the copper that it mines.

As a result, American exports roughly constitute USD 3 billion of global raw copper flow annually, and on the other hand, it imports refined copper to meet growing demand. Despite its abundant domestic reserves, the US is the second-largest importer of foreign copper.

Through its extraction technology, Still Bright will be looking to end this reliance on imports, reducing unnecessary transport and supply chain risks. The start-up is also changing the equation on what is deemed economically recoverable, while preaching that by enabling difficult copper resources and streamlining permitting, the US will be able to shift to producing enough copper to meet its own demands and beyond.

And it wants to quickly start the process of refining copper in large enough quantities to benefit from any tariffs President Trump might impose on the metal’s imports. It will then use that revenue to develop and deploy commercial-scale units.

The post Start-up of the Week: Still Bright & the art of making copper extraction cost-effective appeared first on International Finance.