Form Energy Secures $750 Million to Scale Long-Duration Battery Production

While standard lithium-ion systems typically discharge power for a few hours, Form Energy utilizes a unique chemical process involving iron oxidation. By turning iron into rust during discharge and reversing the reaction to charge, the company offers a lower-cost alternative to batteries reliant on expensive cobalt or nickel. This technology has attracted major corporate buyers, including Google, which is commissioning a 30-gigawatt-hour project in Minnesota, alongside utility partners like Xcel Energy and FuturEnergy Ireland.

Energy storage deployment in the U.S. reached 9.7 gigawatt-hours in the first quarter, reflecting the pressure to stabilize a grid increasingly reliant on renewables. Data centers, projected to quadruple their electricity consumption by 2035, are driving this urgency. Form Energy currently holds an 80-gigawatt-hour commercial backlog, supported by a supply chain that sources 80% of materials domestically or from Europe and Asia, intentionally bypassing the Chinese manufacturing dominance that remains a point of contention for U.S. policy makers.