The Electrochemistry Foundry, founded by members of the Activate community, bridges the pilot-scale gap for hard-tech innovators.
Two of Activate’s co-founders and an Activate Fellow alum have joined forces to solve an urgent problem in the hard-tech ecosystem: getting battery and other electrochemical innovations to market more efficiently, without requiring significant capital up front.
Together, Brenna Teigler, Richard Wang, and Matt Price, have launched the Electrochemistry Foundry (ECF), a nonprofit building California’s first open-access, shared-use battery pilot manufacturing facility—backed by $28M from the California Energy Commission (CEC) and strategically located at the center of Bay Area innovation in Hayward, CA.
Drawing on deep experience in entrepreneurial support and battery innovation, ECF is introducing an innovative new model to address the pilot-to-scale gap in hard tech. Instead of having to build new facilities or outsource production, the electrochemistry community will soon be able to access ECF’s world-class infrastructure for prototyping and piloting—significantly reducing the time and cost to validate breakthrough technologies.
“This is a great example of the leadership mindset we strive to build during and beyond the fellowship, with Activate alumni building the infrastructure to enable electrochemistry entrepreneurs to hit the ground running with their tech,” said Kristyn Fusco, Activate’s Senior Manager of Alumni Relations.
“At Activate, we build the community that drives science into impact by supporting the next generation of hard-tech leaders, even beyond the two-year fellowship.”
Leveraging Activate Roots
Three of the four members of ECF’s initial team have roots at Activate. Brenna Teigler, CEO and co-founder of ECF, and Matt Price, an ECF board member, were among Activate’s co-founders, playing pivotal roles in shaping and scaling the organization into a category-defining model for high-impact science entrepreneurship.
“The Activate community played a central role in the founding of the Electrochemistry Foundry,” said Wang.
“Activate exposed both the potential of non-traditional, capital-efficient pathways and the gaps in the U.S. ecosystem, particularly around pilot manufacturing for electrochemical technologies.
Those insights directly inspired the vision behind ECF: creating shared infrastructure that lowers barriers and opens new pathways to success.”
Building on its Activate DNA, ECF expects to continue to work closely with the Activate community. ECF formed early partnerships with Liminal Insights (Barry Van Tassell & Andrew Hsieh, Cohort 2016) and SirenOpt (Jared O'Leary, Cohort 2023) to share equipment as part of the CEC award, and is in conversation with a variety of other Activate Fellows about potential collaboration.
Beyond these partnerships, ECF could provide the crucial next stage of support for current and future fellows working on energy storage and batteries or chemistry and materials—two of Activate’s 16 tech verticals.
“Activate is about finding incredible entrepreneurial scientists and building a community and support system that gives them time and motivation to calculate the commercial value of their innovation,” said Price. “ECF is about building the next link in the commercial value chain by giving entrepreneurial scientists access to the tools and facilities they need to deliver that commercial value to society.”
No More Building Alone
“Building and owning everything from day one is no longer viable for many hard-tech companies—and, in many cases, was never the most effective path to scale,”
said Leila Madrone, Activate’s Executive Vice President of New Pathways. “We need models that are built around what the technology needs—expanding commercialization pathways beyond traditional venture and enabling access to shared infrastructure like the Electrochemistry Foundry to bring these solutions into the world in ways they’re most likely to succeed.”
Teigler agrees. “We need a new model for innovating in batteries in this country,” she said, arguing that the current process for validating battery technologies “makes no sense.”
“Battery startups don't have the money to hire people or the time to figure it all out—they don’t have the two years it takes, for example, to build a dry room, order and receive equipment, and go through all the tests,” she said. “Or they have to go out of state to use heavily-booked facilities and try to accomplish innovation from afar.”
According to Wang, today’s battery innovators face even more challenges than when he built Cuberg, including steep foreign competition and capital constraints.
“Events like the collapse of Northvolt have also sent shockwaves through the industry, making investors more cautious,” he said. “As a result, innovators must now pursue much more capital-efficient and nimble strategies to bring technologies to market, rather than relying on traditional, capital-intensive approaches.”
ECF’s vision involves sharing expertise as well as infrastructure. ECF is onshoring battery manufacturing know-how from Korea through a partnership with Top Material, who will provide operational support at ECF.
The end goal? No more building alone. “If we’re successful, we can significantly reduce the amount of money and the amount of capabilities and facility work people have to do themselves to produce industry-grade prototypes for their technology,” said Teigler.
Putting People First
One lesson Teigler is bringing from Activate to ECF is the importance of a people-first approach. “Even though we at ECF are going to be building something that looks more technology-oriented on its face, there’s a strong people component,” she said.
“What I learned at Activate is that putting people first is essential to building anything that matters within the ecosystem.”
Beyond directly supporting entrepreneurs, ECF aims to serve as an innovation hub, facilitating collaboration between founders, VCs, corporates, academia, and labor, and providing resources to strengthen each of these pillars of the ecosystem.
Teigler is particularly excited for ECF to tackle workforce development, a crucial gap being felt across emerging sectors of hard tech, through partnerships with the Bay Area Community College Consortium and local labor organizations.
“To really build out this new battery industry, you need to be moving technologies forward, but you also need to be developing the skills of the workforce beyond the entrepreneurs. Activate focuses on the skills of the leaders, but they’re going to need people to hire,” she said. “Our potential to address the workforce problem is something that got me excited about ECF early on.”
An Urgent Window
ECF is launching at a pivotal time for next-generation battery and electrochemical innovation.
“Batteries remain absolutely critical to U.S. competitiveness in the energy sector, and demand has only grown stronger in recent years,” concluded Wang. “At the same time, the headwinds are real—capital is tighter, and the path to scale is harder. But that’s exactly why this work matters more now.”
After proving its entrepreneurial support model for battery innovation, ECF plans to expand to other areas of electrochemistry, where the potential for impact is nearly endless. For example, Roca Water (Margaret Lumley, Cohort 2022) is using electrochemistry for water treatment and turning pollutants into products along the way. Voya Energy, founded by Wang and Steven Kaye (Cohort 2015), is developing a brand-new system to deliver zero-emissions electricity using recyclable metal fuels. And that’s just the beginning.
ECF is hiring. If you’re interested in having a firsthand role in bridging the industrial gap, check out their current openings for VP of Technology and Operations Manager.