The world of international business never sleeps. And this interview is an example of this. While I was sat at my desk during normal working hours (the predictable, normal behaviour of someone outside the C-suite) my subject – Henning Rath, the newly appointed CEO of EnerVenue – was in the back of a taxi in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, where the local time was 10PM.
The last couple of years have been a turbulent time for EnerVenue, the Fremont, California-based lithium-free energy storage business. The company cut around 65 jobs as part of a restructuring that took effect in late 2024 and carried into 2025. The layoffs were disclosed in California WARN filings and reflected efforts to conserve cash and refocus operations as the firm worked to commercialise its metal-hydrogen battery technology.
These cuts were not isolated, of course. They formed part of a broader contraction across the San Francisco Bay Area, where tens of thousands of jobs had already been eliminated in tech (and adjacent sectors) since 2022. In 2025, layoffs continued across both large firms and startups, driven by cost discipline, slower venture funding, and the introduction of AI and automation.
2026, however, has already been a monumental year for EnerVenue: a new CEO, new branding, and the close of a further US $300 million Series B funding extension led by Full Vision Capital, the private equity vehicle of Hong Kong investor Peter Lee Ka-kit. Meanwhile the company is getting closer to opening a high-volume production line in Changzhou (which explains the late-night taxi).
Rath studied for an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering, and then an MBA, at FH Münster University of Applied Sciences (with further study at both Stanford and Harvard universities) before holding a number of senior roles in technology companies, most recently as managing director and chief supply chain officer at Enpal, Germany’s leading residential renewable energy provider.
“I was appointed roughly two weeks ago now,” said Rath, “but I’ve been – let’s say ‘soft on-boarded’ – and supported the fundraising and so on for the past five months.”
This fundraising transforms EnerVenue from a start-up researching a technology originally developed by NASA (and refined at Stanford University) into a fully fledged manufacturing entity. Rath said: “[This investment] enables us to prove that this concept is absolutely viable, $300 million is enough capital to go and bring this technology – right now – into scale, As we speak, we are building the first one, a 250 megawatt hour fully automatic production line here in Changzhou, in Jiangsu Province. And we are expanding next year, with the funding round, to 1GWh.”
But what is the advantage of metal-hydrogen batteries for large-scale energy storage? Rath explained: “First of all, we cannot have a thermal runaway, of have a risk of thermal runaway – which is the biggest risk right now from anything that’s lithium-based. It’s inherently safer chemistry: we have an electrolyte that’s water based and, therefore, there’s no propagation and fire risk.
“Second, we have, roughly, three to three-and-a-half times longer lifetime; so we run 30,000 cycles with minimal degradation. Therefore we have a very low level cost of storage.
“And the third one is, we are very temperature tolerant: from -20°C to +60°C. In a laboratory we can run the batteries – obviously, with slight efficiency losses – but without any risks of damaging the battery. And that makes it perfect for very harsh environments, either very cold places, or in deserts, where we run right now, renewable energy projects in conjunction with data centres, and it’s the perfect chemistry for this purpose.”
One of EnerVenue’s backers is Aramco Ventures, the venture capital arm of Saudi Aramco. And Saudi Arabia is one such harsh environment. “I just came out of a call, half an hour ago, with Saudi Aramco,” said Rath, “and they said they have outside temperatures of 63°. So I was pitching my 60° and [they say] ‘how about 63°?’ and I said, ‘well, I don’t know, let me test’!”
Batteries as infrastructure
I asked Rath about his previous work in the mobility sector (with electric scooter startup Circ, which was later absorbed by Bird) and analogies with the stationary sector. Rath said: “We need to stop thinking about stationary batteries like mobility batteries… they are infrastructure. They need to be safe, long-life, maintenance-free, and live with us, in society, without us noticing them.
“We are completely in stationary. Therefore, energy density, for us … it’s low. But we don’t see this as a disadvantage, as we play in our field, and the metric that we are chasing – energy density –is not Watt hours per kilogram or Watt hours per litre but Watt hours per acre. How much land do you really need to deploy those big containers and battery fields to serve the grid?”
Nickel-hydrogen pressurisation
Nickel-hydrogen batteries use a highly pressurised cell. And this presents both engineering and regulatory challenges. Rath said: “Hydrogen is the lightest element, it only has one electron… the challenge is sealing the system for 30 years without leakage. If you do something 10 times it’s simple – if you do it 30,000 times, it’s different.”
And the literal pressure can lead to regulatory pressure, as Rath explained: “There are regulators that are not sure who or what we are. Are we batteries? Are we pressure vessels? So you need to design for all the different markets and regulatory bodies, while maintaining competitiveness on price and, obviously, performance.”
Start in China, then copy-paste globally
EnerVenue is a US-headquartered company. Rath is German but has lived in China for the last 14 years. Given the current political climate in the US, isn’t manufacturing abroad – particularly in China – an obstacle? Rath doesn’t think so, taking a more international approach: “It is probably a little bit of a romantic thought, but I really believe that these lighthouse projects can combine countries and industries.
“So, rather than polarising and trying to divert, we are trying to build bridges and connect. We keep our R&D teams in Fremont, in the heart of Silicon Valley. And we are commercialising the first production line right now in China. But that does not mean that we would not produce in other countries in the future.
“I think American innovation is extremely strong but we have to acknowledge – and that is also my conviction – that the Chinese infrastructure, with its machinery, its supply chain, its capital efficient iterations, means China is the place to be when it comes to building the first factory. And then we will copy-paste it into the world and produce local-for-local.
“That is one huge upside for our technology – it runs on abundant materials. We have nickel, steel and glass fibre, basically. Therefore you do not have any geopolitical dependence when it comes to rare earth metals or lithium.”
