cathode-active-materials
(3)
Saurabh Ullal
Saurabh Ullal is the CEO of 6K, an advanced materials company in North Andover, Massachusetts that uses a microwave-plasma process called UniMelt to make battery cathode powders and metal powders for additive manufacturing. A chemical engineer by training with a PhD from UC Santa Barbara, he joined 6K as COO and stepped into the CEO role in September 2024 alongside an $82M Series E close, tasked with scaling a technology invented at MIT into industrial tonnage.
ACT-ion Battery Technologies
ACT-ion Battery Technologies is a Dallas-based advanced materials startup building a cleaner, faster way to make cathode active materials (CAM) - the single most expensive ingredient in a lithium-ion battery. Spun out of Hunt Energy Enterprises in 2019 and led by CEO/CTO Jin-Myoung Lim, ACT-ion uses a continuous, chemistry-agnostic manufacturing process to produce surface-engineered single crystal cathode powders in a fraction of the time and cost of incumbents, with less energy, water and waste. The company is scaling its process at a pilot plant in Carrollton, Texas, with the goal of anchoring a domestic battery-materials supply chain.
Jin Lim
Jin-Myoung Lim is the co-founder, CEO, and CTO of ACT-ion Battery Technologies, a Dallas-based deep-tech startup reinventing how cathode active materials (CAM) are made for lithium-ion batteries. A PhD mechanical engineer from Seoul National University with 2,272+ research citations and an h-index of 27, Lim spun ACT-ion out of Hunt Energy Enterprises in 2019 with a bold thesis: that the biggest bottleneck in the battery supply chain isn't the chemistry - it's the manufacturing process. His Hydro4Crystal platform produces coated single-crystal CAMs continuously, with lower energy, cost, and emissions than any incumbent method, and it works across chemistries from LFP to NMC. In 2024, the technology won an R&D 100 Award. By late 2025, ACT-ion had raised $11.5 million from BASF Venture Capital, LG Technology Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, and Korean institutional investors, and was breaking ground on a pilot plant in Carrollton, Texas.