UMD Energy Start-Up receives $8M investment

Ion Storage Systems (ISS) announced the closing of an $8M financing round led by Alsop Louie Partners a risk-oriented venture capital firm based in San Francisco. ISS is focused on developing the most energy dense and safest batteries that can be deployed in any environment. Their breakthroughs in solid state battery technology have led to a battery that meets mission critical needs for the defense and aerospace industries, and are safer, lighter, and smaller for consumer electronics and electric vehicles.

Alsop Louie invests in high potential technology companies led by visionary entrepreneurs with bold ideas and big dreams. They actively seek companies with breakthrough technologies that can reshape the future, create new markets, and tackle tough problems. Alsop Louie’s investment in ISS will assist with the scale-up in manufacturing of the company’s transformational batteries.

ISS is an energy spin-off company from the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute(MEI²) at the University of Maryland(UMD), which to date has received ~$12M in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E and EERE, NASA, and Lockheed Martin, and is a recent winner of the LG Chem Battery Challenge.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for us to transition university research and innovation into a commercially viable technology and meet the tremendous industry demand we’ve received for delivery of batteries” said Dr. Eric Wachsman, director of MEI²and founder and CEO of ISS.

“We believe that Ion Storage Systems is poised to be the leader in an emerging generation of rechargeable battery technology companies”, said Mark G. Fields of Alsop Louie Partners who will join the ISS Board.

Creating an energy business ecosystem in the state of Maryland has been the focus of MEI²since its creation by the Governor and Legislature in 2017. UMD has made significant investments in entrepreneurship, with numerous faculty and students developing commercially viable energy technologies and spin-offs. MEI²is catalyzing this energy research and innovation, thus providing the technology push necessary for Maryland to generate state jobs and increase state economic impact, as in the case of ISS who based on this investment plans on hiring ~20 employees this year. ISS is located in the Technology Ventures Building in College Park, Maryland, the state’s first energy technology focused incubator located near the UMD campus.

Published June 3, 2019