Liminal—formerly Feasible—Raised an $8M Series A to Move Tech to Pilot Stage

In early April, Feasible, the battery manufacturing intelligence company co-founded by Cohort 2016 fellows Andrew Hsieh and Barry Van Tassell, announced an $8 million Series A financing round, as well as its new name: Liminal. Business Insider broke the news.

Team member at Liminal, co-founded by Andrew Hsieh and Barry Van Tassel (Cohort 2016)

Cohort 2016 fellows and Liminal co-founders Andrew Hsieh and Barry Van Tassell at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, 2017

Good Growth Capital (GGC) and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC) co-led the round, with participation from Volta Energy Technologies, Helios Capital Ventures, and Impact Science Ventures. Earlier investors including Chrysalix Ventures, Elemental Excelerator, and Incite.org continued their support.

The funding is helping Liminal accelerate and expand product deployment to battery manufacturers and automakers who are focused on improving electric vehicle battery cost, performance, and reliability.

Activate alumni Hsieh and Tassell in the Liminal lab, 2021

“Over the last year or so we’ve gotten good early proof points with customers at the bench scale,” says Hsieh. “We’re using the Series A to build the first commercial-scale units for fully automated pilot production lines, where customers work out final issues before advancing a new product to full commercial production. We anticipate raising Series B funding in a couple of years to deploy commercial units for gigawatt-hour-scale production.”

Currently, battery manufacturers check quality at the end of production, using electrical methods that Hsieh says are analogous to checking blood pressure and pulse. “Those are critical metrics, but by relying on only those quality checks, you miss a lot of things—things that impact the long-term performance of the battery,” he says.

Liminal’s role in the burgeoning EV supply chain is critical. Its technology helps customers detect process issues upstream, when, and where they occur, rather than downstream, where performance issues have larger costlier impacts. 

Team member at Liminal, co-founded by Andrew Hsieh and Barry Van Tassel (Cohort 2016)

Already, massive battery recalls have illustrated the risks that automakers and manufacturers face as they build capacity for large-scale electrification. As demand for electric vehicles and mass transit grows, so does the need for better battery inspection processes. 

“Working with Liminal gives us a competitive edge as the EV industry grapples with growing pains and recalls. We welcome Liminal’s focus on manufacturing-stage solutions and believe their technology is very promising in different steps of the process,” Stefan Holzhauer, director of technology partnerships for digital industries at Siemens.

The name and brand Liminal evokes liminal space, between phases, and speak to the power of the transition to electric vehicles and clean energy. Battery manufacturing intelligence plays a crucial role in enabling that process.

A Healthy Capital Ecosystem
Building connections is one of the key benefits that Activate provides fellows, and it has proven helpful Hsieh’s fundraising efforts since its early days. 

Liminal co-founder and CEO Andrew Hsieh, 2021

“I met Matt Rogers of incite.org through [Activate CEO] Ilan Gur, and incite.org became our first investors,” says Hsieh. “That catalyzed our Preseed in 2018. Then in 2019, Chrysalix Ventures led our Series Seed, after learning about us through the fellowship. As we started to fundraise the Series A, I approached UTEC, which I had been talking to for a year, thanks to an introduction from Liam Barryman, CEO of Nelumbo. And I met Maureen [Stanik Boyce] at Good Growth through Aimee Rose [Activate executive managing director], who had met her after Good Growth invested in Radical Plastics [Cohort 2020].”

Nelumbo and Radical Plastics are Cohort 2017 and Cohort 2022 companies, respectively. 

“There is an Activate connection with just about all of our investors,” says Hsieh.

The Liminal team, 2022

Follow Andrew Hsieh on Twitter at @AndrewGHsieh. To see current job openings at Liminal, visit the Activate job board.