Circu Li-ion receives €8.5m seed funding to automate sustainable battery recycling

Circu Li-ion, a European battery recycling startup, has announced the successful closing of a €8.5 million seed financing round.

The recent funding includes €4.5 million in equity, which was led by BonVenture and saw additional backing from an undisclosed group of battery, AI, and industry experts, and a significant participation of the company’s management team. The investment is complemented by €4 million in grants from the EICA (European Innovation Council Accelerator) and collaborations with recyclers and OEMs - demonstrating their devotion to a greener future.

Antoine Welter, CEO and Co-founder Circu Li-ion: ''We're happy to double down on our development speed, turning this fresh funding into smarter, data-focused solutions that make battery recycling economically and ecologically viable for everyone. For this, the key is a great team – we will further invest in our team and double our size of currently 34 colleagues within the next twelve months.''

Circu Li-ion’s vision of bringing urban mining to life through an automated upcycling platform for end-of-life batteries is reinforced by the support and confidence of its new strategic partners. Contracts with market-leading OEMs from the Electronic Vehicles (EV), Micromobility, and Power Tools industries, alongside leading European recyclers, add invaluable expertise that will support Circu Li-ion’s further development. These partnerships highlight the collective goal of facilitating a circular battery value chain in Europe, especially considering the EV market's surge to become a trillion-dollar market by 2030.

Circu Li-ion holds a clear commitment to sustainability and recycling benchmarks with the ultimate goal of upcycling 3 billion batteries by 2035. 

Nikolaj Klebert, Investment Manager, BonVenture: ''Since the first contact with the outstanding team, we have been enthusiastic about the highly dynamic environment of battery up- and recycling in which they have occupied the field very early and taken a dominant role. Circu Li-Ion puts a stop to the current 2 / 3 destruction of value in the form of a technically sophisticated and particularly innovative solution, thus unlocking previously inaccessible potential down to the level of the individual cell. This is what makes a particularly high level of sustainability possible in the first place and makes an important contribution to the transformation of many industries.''

www.circuli-ion.com