Building an Energy Company

On 21 November 2024 Northvolt, the Swedish battery maker that had been Europe's answer to CATL, filed for Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas with about $5.8 billion of debt and about $30 million of cash, enough to run for about a week (reported). Its co-founder and chief executive, Peter Carlsson, stepped down. Scania, the truck maker that was one of its customers and part of its largest shareholder's group, provided a $100 million loan to keep it going (reported). On 12 March 2025, having found no investor to fund a reorganisation, Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in Sweden. Its industrial-battery unit went to Scania in April 2025, and its main plant at Skellefteå, near the Arctic Circle, together with its expansion and its research site at Västerås, passed to Lyten, a California lithium-sulphur start-up, in a deal agreed in August 2025 and completed on 26–27 February 2026 (Lyten). The plant in Heide, Germany, was handled separately; Lyten signed an exclusive memorandum for it on 1 July 2026 (reported).

Northvolt had been founded in 2016 by Carlsson, who had run Tesla's supply chain in 2012–15, and Paolo Cerruti, another Tesla alumnus. It raised more than $13 billion of equity and debt (reported), counted Volkswagen (about 21%), Goldman Sachs funds, BMW and Nordic pension funds among its owners, and signed orders it put at more than $50 billion (company claim). Its pitch was strong: low-carbon cells made with hydro and wind power, security of supply for European carmakers, and a domestic industry the European Commission, Sweden and the European Investment Bank wanted. Its first cell came off the line at Skellefteå, Northvolt Ett, on 28 December 2021. But Ett's output stayed a small fraction of its first-phase capacity of 16 GWh a year (reported), BMW cancelled a contract worth about €2 billion in June 2024 after delays, and in September 2024 the company cut about 1,600 Swedish jobs. It had announced factories in Germany, Poland and Quebec before its first plant worked.

This chapter explains the three ways of building an energy company, why the order in which a founder proves things matters more than the amount raised, and why in manufacturing the decisive cost is the one learned on the line.