Battery Innovation Today
Those founders are willing to challenge the status quo.
Each week we're highlighting one founder from the Battery Start-Up Incubator (BaStI) who is turning a breakthrough idea into a real-world solution. Their ventures address the most critical challenges in the battery value chain — from advanced materials and manufacturing optimization to next-generation battery technologies.
5 weeks. 5 stories in full length. For 5 weeks.
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For Thomas and Paul, the challenge was deeply personal. After more than 16 years each in research and industry, they kept encountering the same bottleneck: cell qualification (“cell aging” or “self discharge test”) remained one of the slowest steps in battery production. Bastian joined and the question gradually shifted from “Why does this still take so long?” to “How can we make it better?”. Watch the full video below.
Every family gathering has that one topic that keeps coming up. For brothers Manuel and David Reiter, it was logistics. After years of working across engineering, automotive manufacturing, sales, economics, and data analytics, they kept seeing the same opportunity: an industry that keeps the world moving deserved tools that were just as modern as the products it delivers.
Some start-up ideas emerge in a workshop. Others begin on the water. For this founders, it began with a plan to install car batteries in a sailboat. While searching for a suitable battery management system, they discovered a gap that many battery manufacturers were facing as well: the right product simply didn’t exist.
The story began in an exchange in Canada, where Tom and Sebastian met at Jeff Dahn’s lab, working on a research project for Tesla. As they explored sodium-ion batteries, they identified a key challenge: high-quality active materials were difficult to source.
Some founders spend years preparing for entrepreneurship before taking the leap. For Ali, the path unfolded naturally through a career dedicated to scientific excellence, collaboration, and curiosity.
As a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute, the founder had already witnessed the journey from research to commercialization through two successful spin-offs emerging from Dresden and Max Planck.
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| Limatica | For Thomas and Paul, the challenge was deeply personal. After more than 16 years each in research and industry, they kept encountering the same bottleneck: cell qualification (“cell aging” or “self discharge test”) remained one of the slowest steps in battery production. The question gradually shifted from “Why does this still take so long?” to “How can we make it better?” that ambition became Limatica. In 2024, the team gained a powerful new dimension when Bastian, an experienced go-to-market leader, joined the journey helping transform a technical vision into a company ready to scale. |
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| Lokistix | Every family gathering has that one topic that keeps coming up. For brothers Manuel and David Reiter, it was logistics. After years of working across engineering, automotive manufacturing, sales, economics, and data analytics, they kept seeing the same opportunity: an industry that keeps the world moving deserved tools that were just as modern as the products it delivers. That shared realization became Lokistix, who are on a mission to make battery logistics safer, smarter, and more transparent. |
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