ev-battery-supply-chain
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BANIQL
BANIQL is a Santa Clara / San Jose-based climate-tech startup building a low-acid, low-energy chemical process to extract nickel and cobalt from laterite ore for lithium-ion batteries. Its patented method runs at atmospheric pressure and lower temperatures, cutting energy use and CO2 emissions by roughly 80%, lowering costs by about 30% versus conventional high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL), and generating virtually zero waste. Founded in 2021, the company runs R&D and pilot production in the U.S. and ton-scale prototype production in Indonesia, targeting the EV and battery-materials supply chain.
Lukas Hackl
Lukas Hackl is the co-founder and CEO of Aepnus Technology, an Emeryville, California startup building electrolyzers that turn sodium sulfate waste - a salty byproduct piling up across the EV battery supply chain - back into the sulfuric acid and caustic soda that battery makers have to buy. The technology grew out of his UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory PhD work on electrochemical water desalination. After hearing the same waste complaint on road trips from California to Canada, he and co-founder Bilen Akuzum turned a laboratory curiosity into a company that emerged from stealth in 2024 with $8 million in seed funding led by Clean Energy Ventures.