US advanced materials company Ten-Nine Technologies has moved to commercial-scale production of its Tenix cathode additive at its facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The company said it now has production capacity of 100 tons and is accepting orders for delivery in 2026–27. It did not specify whether the capacity figure represented annual output.
Tenix is blended into cathode material during battery manufacturing and accounts for 0.5–2% of the cathode’s weight. Ten-Nine said it can be incorporated into existing production lines without new equipment or changes to battery design.
At the stated dosage, the company’s present capacity would be sufficient to treat the cathode material for an estimated 50,000–200,000 typical electric vehicle battery packs.
Ten-Nine: Tenix is an “anti-ageing” additive
Ten-Nine describes Tenix as an “anti-ageing” additive that inhibits chemical decomposition during repeated charging and discharging. The company claims third-party testing recorded more than 75% additional charge-discharge cycles, potentially increasing the working life of an EV battery from a 150,000-mile warranty baseline to more than 265,000 miles.
It also reported a 10% reduction in internal resistance and said the additive could reduce cumulative heat generation by around 40% over a battery’s lifetime. Ten-Nine calculated that the longer cycle life could lower the cost per kilowatt-hour delivered over the battery’s lifetime by approximately 40%.
The company did not identify the independent testing organisation or disclose the cell chemistry, test conditions or cycle-life thresholds used to produce these figures.
Ten-Nine is particularly targeting manganese-rich cathode chemistries, which can reduce reliance on nickel and cobalt but have historically faced cycle-life limitations. It said Tenix’s surface chemistry was designed to address degradation in these materials, although the proprietary composition of the additive was not disclosed.
Paige Johnson, founder and chief executive officer of Ten-Nine Technologies, said: “Just like people, batteries age. Products of chemical decomposition build up during use, limiting a battery’s performance and lifetime, and until now that’s just been treated as an unavoidable cost of doing business.
“I’m a chemist so I wanted to fix that at the source rather than build a whole new battery to work around it. Tenix has a unique surface chemistry that disrupts that ageing process, giving batteries more power and significantly longer life.”
Ten-Nine said Tenix could be used in batteries for electric vehicles, defence equipment, power tools and stationary energy storage. The additive is undergoing evaluation by battery manufacturers which the company said collectively account for more than half of global battery production volume. It did not name the manufacturers or give expected dates for completing the trials.
Founded in 2014, Ten-Nine employs around 30 people and has raised $45 million. The company said it holds 67 granted patents covering its cathode chemistry.
