Everybody wants a better battery, Christine Ho is printing one

a better battery. There's just infinite demand for better batteries that are safer, that our higher performance and those better batteries, and not just because you want a smartphone that will run for the whole day without needing more juice, but also because batteries are powering more of our lives and are crucial to making renewable power reliable and their job

is not done yet. As batteries have become cheaper, people want to put them in all kinds of places, and that means they need to come in all kinds of shapes. You can fold them, they're flexible, they're bendable. So just to kind of prove a point we've made like donut shape batteries before and fund things like that. That's Christine Howe, the founder of Imprint Energy. She's making three D printed

foldable batteries which can be used as smart labels. Think of the last time you ordered something online and got a million updates about where it was. Each of those updates came from a person interacting with and scanning that package. A smart label powered by Imprint's battery can send the

messages itself. So these are almost like a cell phone that's been flattened out and a cellphone that you can kind of attach to almost anything, and in that case you can actually track where this is anywhere in the world. That's scott selphone coverage. That connectivity might not seem important if it's just about a pair of shoes, but being able to get updates and information about the heat and humidity that are exposed to can stop us wasting so

much stuff. Imprints batteries are being tested by companies that ship food and even crop seeds. These packages are particularly vulnerable to theft and price couching, and more benignly, it's just important that they stay at a certain temperature. With food, the lastes on the error of like a third of food that's producer just doesn't get to the right place, or it gets over ripens or rots along the way. Optimizing delivery using technology like imprints can reduce emissions while

saving on fuel costs. And there's a broader point. As the race continues to make new and better batteries, the innovations won't only help avoid waste and cut emissions, they'll

also have applications we can only imagine. Christine has already raised twenty five million dollars for imprint Energy, and when I visited her last summer in an office park in Silicon Valley, they were scrambling to finish an order of thousands of batteries, working double shifts to get those batteries out the Christine took the Zero team on a tour of her small factory and then afterwards sat down to talk about how she became a battery person, how she

went from academia to running a company, and how a printaple goop became a working battery. Welcome to the show, Christine, thank you. Now, what is the moment that you thought batteries are the future? So I went to Berkeley for my undergrad degree and grad degree. I studied matual science. My dad was actually matual scientists, and so I decided, I'm going to try this out and if it works,

that's great. It's not. You know, I can change my mind, and I really didn't have an understanding of what I wanted to do, but I answered an undergraduate ad to become a researcher in a group that was setting battery and so I just wanted a way to make a little bit of money through the year and to help out. But I got really lucky because the grad student that

I was helping, his name is Dan Steinert. He was a very extremely passionate person about batteries and just wanted to solve really hard tech problems and that was just really infectious. I just got very obsessed with it as well, and since then, you know, I've just been also obsessed with making better batteries. Being from Berkeley, we were very influenced by the clean tech sustainability focused there as well.

So it was really by kind of luck and inspired by just somebody who had infinite passion for this field. And then between finishing your grad studies and founding Imprint Energy, what do you do a lot along the way. So when I started researching batteries as an undergrad, I was looking at lithium ion chemistries and like everybody else, trying to squeeze as much density and performance out of really

unusual materials. And as time went on, you know, I became a safety officer and had to deal with many explosions in the lab. So I just got I think a little bit tired of lithium. Chemistries are just difficult to work with, and I knew there were all these sort of problems with the materials themselves and the safety of these chemistries. Most electronic devices are powered by lithium ion batteries your cell phone, your laptop, your electric car. But these batteries back in so much energy that if

they get damaged, it can lead to catastrophic fires. In for example, like a warehouse, two palettes run into each other, and there was a lithium power tracker that looked like the size of a cell phone in between those two palettes. They literally exploded, you know, and then damage a bunch

of inventory as well. So a lot of these retailers are being pushed to the point of saying, hey, we have to eliminate any sort of the dangerous you know, oftentimes lithium batteries in the warehouse because there's just too much commotion here, there's too much risk of damage or flammability risk. Or whatever. So grad school, Christine had a problem to solve, and the solution lay in non lithium

mine Chemistries. I got inspired by taking a trip out to Japan for the summer, and while I was there, I was in a lab that wanted to print three D batteries using really next gen printing technology. I was supposed to be the lithium battery person that would help them print these materials. But I go to this facility and it's literally like an office space without any safety exhaust or glove boxes. So there's no way we're going

to handle these dangerous lithium materials. And so it almost felt like our project wasn't able to take off the ground. But when we thought about it, we thought, well, why don't we process a much safer material? And zinc kept coming up as like, well, this is much safer, you don't need all that overhead, and so that was a pivotal turn for me. I went from focusing on lithium batteries to zinc because I realize just much easier material to handle, It's much easier to process, it's earth abundant.

So once we started focusing on zinc, we realize we could process these zinc batteries differently than how their main in double as Today the double or triple A battery that you most commonly handle is not a lithium and battery. Those are made with metals like zinc and manganese, which are far less likely to cause fires. Christine uses the same chemistry but with some very important tweaks to make imprint energies batteries which can be printed. Christine took us

on a tour as they were actually doing this. The batteries start as raw materials that come in giant sex like bags of large bags of rice and la or beans, but they've got powders in them. Our batteries literally start off as powders and solvents that we kind of blend together. So you know, for example, like our zinc collectro, it's got zinc powder, it's got some binder that holds its gether,

and it's got a solvent that makes it flow. And same with that magni sack side cathode, and then behind us over here and over here a bunch of mixers that look like you're kind of home kitchen egg mixer, but ten times bigger. And then using the giant mixer. All of those powders are turned into a very special goop. It looks a little like glue, the kind you used to play with in school and get all over your fingers. It's this kind of white pace. It's pretty viscous. It

does flow, but it's also quite pasty and thick. And so we're actually printing this by squeezing it through a sensil, and that sensil has a pattern on it, So whatever shape you want to print from a battery perspective, you just cut out that sensil shape. So literally today we've got four rectangles that we're printing on each substrate, but it could be four hearts. While finishing a PhD, Christine started to look into the Internet of Things as a

route to using her research. If you haven't heard of this term yet, the Internet of things or IoT. It's the connection of physical objects fridges, thermostats, or even packages to the Internet, and many of these devices required batteries.

Given the trends in sensors and Internet of things, we realized that there'd be this interesting opportunity to integrate these types of safe batteries in lots of devices, and so I spent a lot of time on the mature science side of that, trying to make these materials work, trying to get some sort of proof of concept that these batteries had good performance, they could be processed. And I just got really lucky. This doesn't happen to every grad student,

but my project actually worked. I had some really compelling data, and so in my last year as a grad student, I started publishing that data, going out on the conference circuit talking about my work, and a consistent message that came back from big companies that were at these talks was that they wanted to get their hands on this technology. I was kind of the first time, I'm sure to think about, like, well, what does happen to academic research.

Does it stay you know, in the four walls of hers Mining building, which is where I did all my research as a grad student, or is there a way for this technology to get out? And that was the first time, you know, me and also my advisors and mentors started to talk about commercialization and using different vehicles, whether it's licensing or startups, to pull technology out of

the university. And so, you know, after emotionally sort of switching gears from being a researcher really just fixated on solving a hard problem to somebody really interested in bringing technology to the real world. That inspired this idea that we could start a company in Print Energy to commercialize cool technology. So what aio did you found the company and how many years before you actually made the product

that somebody would buy. I graduated like Christmas two ten, and we incorporated the company like December two and ten, and so this is my first and only real full time job, you know, outside of school essentially, so for

four or five years we incubated on campus. We essentially kind of paid the equivalent of like a gym membership to stay on campus, use the facilities, and we got to keep the ip as Imprint Energy as an entity, but we got to kind of get the benefit of still being in that academic space and having access to all that incredible equipment and all the smart people. We had a lot of student interns that helped build those

early prototypes. So it took some time. You know, batteries are really challenging in that to stabilize and understand the chemistry, you have to make a lot of batteries and you have to test a lot. You can't get away with just making one and then just go into market. So it took us some time there, and in that time we bootstrapped the company. We entered a lot of business competitions. We probably made under one hundred thousand in various competitions.

The first one I think we won was just an inter Berkeley competition, and I remember the check size being sent five hundred dollars and we thought we were rich. We bought a screen printer with that money. Then we kind of graduated to applying for grants and that brought us into the realm of bringing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars into the company. So that helped funded that early kind of development chemistry, stabilization, proof of

concept stage of just us understanding this chemistry. I think about twenty fourteen fifteen time frame. We started to get good, consistent results and so we raised our Series A and that gave us a larger infusion of resources to hire a team to move to the space. So we move straight to Alameda from Berkeley. It's the same facility we

walked around. These batteries are being manufactured in a space no bigger than your average classroom, and it is the smallest battery factory I have seen, not just because Imprint Energy is a startup, but because the innovative process just requires less space. Takes like tens of meters of space in a large scale battery facility to be able to make tens of thousands of batteries in general. Yeah, so

it's a much more compact process. So overall, and the workhorse of our processing is printing, drying, and then laminating. There's some finishing processes of the customer wants holes punched in a certain place, or if they wanted to attach to something. But you know, to make a say like a lithium battery could take anywhere from ten to multiple dozens of different equipment and different stations. So it's very simple. We've gone through a very interesting journey looking for product

market fit with customers. Batteries are really interesting in that everybody wants a better battery, and so we get approached by customers from little things to like massive things all the time. There's just infinite demand for better batteries that are safer that our higher performance, and so what's been challenging for us is narrowing that and saying, okay, you know, our initial markets are really going to be in this one space, and we're best positioned to be that solution

in that market. So that took us some time. You know, we did a lot of projects with customers and we made a lot of amazing things, but it took us some time to land on this IoT smart label market as this huge growth opportunity that has no other real good solution. It wasn't really until the last couple of years that we got there. So we're now at a phase today where we've got orders from customers and they're on the order of one hundreds of thousands of units.

We're about to negotiate a million unit contract with one of our customers, and we're at a scale up phase. And what that means is we need to be able to make this battery in huge volume and also more cost effectively. And along that journey, you know, it's been

more than ten years. I've always thought every day was like a really hard day, but scaling up is really hard, and so we're kind of living our hardest lessons and finding our hardest battles now because making a thing in huge volume, cost effectively and delighting your customers over and over again is just really really challenging. After the break, how Christine raised money to go from a prototype group to working batteries, and how she transitioned from academia to

running a company. By the way, if you want to check out what these batteries look like, we have some pictures online and a link in the show notes. Most industries that shift their products long distances plan for a certain amount of waste. The pharma industry, Christine says, can see up to forty percent loss in the supply chain. It's one reason they produce more drugs than needed, knowing that there will be losses. The food industry can have

comparable losses, especially during transport. The emissions linked to waste are a major challenge, one that Christine hopes to solve by powering smart labels with printable batteries. But getting there means scaling production of these batteries fast. So right now we're kind of in a race. We literally have a unit target today. I think the target was four hundred or five hundred batteries. I think we met it, but

we're trying to catch up. We're on the hook to deliver thousands of batteries this month, and with summer vacations and things, you know. In some cases like equipment going down, we've had to recover time. So we've actually been running extended shifts to the interview. You're getting on the line. Yeah, yeah, I mean all of us are on the hook essentially, So I ask you guys to join the line if you have extra high ideas. So in the scale of phase, capital is still key. How much more money have you

raised since? And like how much do you need to raise because you're also getting revenue. Yeah, yeah, So over the lifetime of the company, in terms of institutional funding, we've raised a total about twenty five million or so. We've completed a Series B over basically during COVID, so we're gearing up to raise a much larger Series C. In that Series AID to B phase, we've really been not just validating technology, but validating our customer and market targets.

Series C is really about scaling and getting to the point where we can build a profitable business, and so we're anticipating that we'll probably raise another twenty thirty million dollars to build up that capability and capacity. Lots of entrepreneurs start companies, but not all entrepreneurs who have PhDs and battery science start companies. So what's been your learning going from being an expert in the subject area right to being able to not just use that expertise for

that subject, but also have business skills alongside. I talked to a lot of PhD with the aspiration of being entrepreneur, and I think a lot about my own experience too. I think the pH experience is actually really both magical and frustrating. It's a test of character. You know, you're required to spend years studying things and ultimately becoming an expert at something, and so that requires putting in the

time and putting a lot of effort. My PAH experience was that I was the ultimate owner of my project. There was nobody else who was going to drive this project forward except for me. I had to become really self reliant, really innovative and creative. But a lot of motivation had to come from within. People who get their PhD are actually inherently really driven. They've got a lot of that motivation within them, and it's a really great

skill from an entrepreneurial standpoint. What I was really challenged with was working together in teams and building trust with people. I knew I didn't want to be a lone wolf, but at the same time, I was used to doing everything myself. When you start a company, there's just so much to do. There's no way you can be the one person that does everything. And so building trusts in others and realizing, hey, there might be somebody that's even better position to do this hard thing than me has

been a really interesting exercise over time. One of the greatest gifts I ever I think got from that standpoint, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is I got pregnant four years ago. I had a child, had to stay away on maternity leave for a number of months, and it drove me crazy, you know, like I wanted to be here, see what's gone on, solve problems alongside my team, but I had to step away, I had to disengage. When I came back, I realized, I've got an empty plate, and I can

choose what I can put on this plate. I don't have to do everything. I can choose the things that I am best leverage to do, and I can trust that all the other things are happening. And so being away actually showed me that the machine actually kept rolling

forward and actually the machine was working really well. So I think that transition from being self reliant and working on your own and being kind of successful on your own to working in a team was one of the major leaps that I had to go through from being a PC student to an entrepreneur. As well as making finish batteries, Christine tells us in the factory that her crew is shipping the materials and licensing the know how for other manufacturers to make our print the batteries themselves.

We're in the middle of actually doing that tech trance for two manufacturers in different countries right now. Our manufacturing partners print labels. They literally print a label that might go around your toy or a label that's on a T shirt. They're used to really simple processes, and so we've tried to make our process fit in with that

kind of workflow. You're doing something that's quite unusual where you are essentially giving the entire process from the powder that we looked at a way to making of the battery, from the printing and the ceiling to somebody else to make it. You know, how do you feel about that? Yeah, because you have to maintain a certain level of quality, and that's right. Yeah, so's there's a couple elements of that.

The reason why it's important to have a portable process from start to finish is that so if our battery is made here and the smart labels assembled, you know, a different continent, than shipping that battery from one place to another adds costs and complexity and time. And so what we're seeing in the industry is that they're trying

to consolidate all that manufacturing in one place. So what you can actually imagine is these label companies not just you know, assembling the label, but starting from making the batteries themselves and then ultimately assembling the whole thing under one roof. That's not how things are done today right now. One components made in one location, another components made another, and then there's somebody who kind of takes those lego

blocks and assembles them together. But you know, with the complexity of logistics and supply chains, we're finding that that's just too complex and too costly and too vulnerable. If you had a billboard outside your house with a message of the world, what would it say, Keep moving forward?

You know, just keep going. I've been with this company, but also just looking at batteries for a really long time, and there's and people ask me all the time, like how can you dedicate yourself and spend so much time doing one thing and focus on one thing? And there's just a lot of joy when you keep at it, keep moving forward. That was a fascinating conversation. We're not going to keep you for much longer, you know. Let you go back to the assembly line and hit that goal.

Thank you so much. I keep thinking about Christine's question because it's a question I asked when I was in grad school finishing my PhD. What does happen to research? Where does it go? Too often? It just gets published in a journal and is never heard of again. Christine started this process ten years ago. The funding environment for battery startups is easier now, especially with the Inflation Reduction Act, which, by the way, you can hear more about in our

other episodes with alizad Lea Stokes and Bill Gates. Thanks for listening to Zero. If you liked this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We've had some lovely reviews from listeners recently, so thank you to everyone who's taken the time to write something. Share this with a friend, or send it to someone who gets a

lot of packages delivered. If you've got a suggestion for a guest or topic, or something you just want us to look into, get in touch at zero pod at Bloomberg dot net. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine driscoll. Our theme music is by Wonderly Special thanks to Banquet Wiswynathan and Kira Bindram. I'm Akshatrati back next week.