battery
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Sujeet Kumar
Sujeet Kumar is the co-founder and CEO of Ionblox, a Fremont, California battery company building pre-lithiated silicon-anode lithium-ion cells for electric vehicles and electric aviation. A materials scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and more than 60 patents to his name, he previously served as CTO of Envia Systems, where his team developed one of the first 400 Wh/kg lithium-ion cells with a silicon anode. Ionblox, formerly Zenlabs Energy, has raised roughly $32 million in Series B funding from backers including Lilium, Applied Ventures, Temasek and Catalus Capital, and markets cells that promise higher energy density, up to five times more power, and 10-minute fast charging.
Arch Rao
Arch Rao is the Founder and CEO of SPAN, a San Francisco-based clean energy hardware company that reinvented the home electrical panel. A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer and former Tesla Energy leader who helped launch Powerwall, Powerpack, and SolarCity products, Rao founded SPAN in 2018 with a singular mission: rapidly decarbonize American homes by making the century-old electrical panel smart. SPAN's intelligent panels enable circuit-level control, real-time energy monitoring, solar and battery integration, and grid demand response - turning a neglected utility box into the command center for home electrification. With over $522M in total funding and backing from Wellington Management, Fifth Wall, Robert Downey Jr.'s FootPrint Coalition, and Amazon's Alexa Fund, SPAN is building the grid-edge infrastructure layer for the coming decades of home electrification.
Keven Wang
Keven Wang is the Co-Founder and CEO of UnitX, a Santa Clara-based AI robotics company transforming industrial quality control through machine vision. A Stanford computer science alumnus with roots in SalesforceIQ engineering, Wang founded UnitX in 2018 alongside Adam Yang and Weixiong Zheng. The company has since deployed 820+ AI inspection systems across 135+ factories worldwide - inspecting $6.1B worth of products annually - and raised $92M in total funding. UnitX's flagship platforms (FleX, GenX, OptiX) help automotive, EV battery, and electronics manufacturers cut defect escapes by 9x and reduce scrap rates by up to 50%, with a philosophy Wang distills as: 'automate everything and maximize human intellect.'