In a country better known for shipping oil than for replacing it, a small Norwegian deeptech outfit is trying to design the materials that make the next generation of batteries cheaper, denser, and less reliant on fragile supply chains. Planck Technologies AS, founded by computational chemist Maryam Ghadran, is working at the intersection of material science and energy storage, with the stated aim of bridging laboratory chemistry and industrial application [The Energy Newsletter, May 2024].
The pitch, as Planck describes it, is not a single battery chemistry or a finished cell. It is the layer underneath: the discovery and commercialization of advanced materials that energy storage systems are eventually built from [The Hub]. That is a deliberate position. The Norwegian industrial base already has companies further down the value chain, from Hexagon Purus in compressed hydrogen storage to a growing cluster of cell assemblers along the Skagerrak. Planck is positioning itself further upstream, where a single materials breakthrough can ripple across many product categories at once.
The bet
Ghadran's background in computational chemistry matters here, because the economics of materials discovery have changed in the last five years. What used to require years of wet-lab synthesis can now be narrowed down through simulation, screening millions of candidate structures before anyone touches a beaker. That is the same thesis animating venture-backed peers like CuspAI and Orbital Materials, both of which Pitchbook lists as Planck competitors [PitchBook]. NuMat Technologies in Chicago and Promethean Particles in the UK are pursuing related plays in metal-organic frameworks and nanomaterials [PitchBook]. The category is real, and it is getting funded.
Planck's specific wedge, according to the company's own description, is the translation step: taking promising materials out of academic publication and into something an energy storage customer can specify, qualify, and buy [The Hub]. Kavya Penmatcha leads business development [Planck Technologies website], which suggests the company is already thinking about the customer-facing motion rather than treating commercialization as an afterthought. Backing comes from the Innovation Network for Advanced Materials, an investor consortium focused on exactly this kind of deep technical bet [PitchBook].
Why it could be big
The market backdrop is favorable in a way it has not been before. European battery manufacturing capacity is being built out under the Net Zero Industry Act, and the bloc has been explicit about wanting non-Chinese material supply chains. Norway in particular has cheap hydropower, a chemical engineering talent base inherited from its oil and gas era, and an active state apparatus willing to co-fund industrial scale-up. A Norwegian materials company that can credibly supply European cell makers is, on paper, exactly the kind of company that Brussels would like to see succeed.
The headline opportunity. The upside, if Planck lands even a narrow materials win, is meaningful. Consider the unit economics in plain terms.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Global Li-ion demand 2030 (estimated) | 3500 GWh |
| Materials cost share of a cell | 60 percent |
| Addressable materials market 2030 (estimated) | 210 $B |
Back of envelope: at roughly 3.5 TWh of projected annual lithium-ion demand by 2030 and a cell cost of around $100 per kWh, the global cell market clears roughly $350B per year. Active materials (cathode, anode, electrolyte, separator) account for somewhere near 60 percent of that, which puts the addressable materials layer in the $200B range (estimated). A specialty supplier capturing one tenth of one percent of that pool is a $200M revenue business. That is the shape of the prize, and it is why investors keep funding companies in this category even when the science timelines are long.
The team and traction
Ghadran is the public face of the company and brings the computational chemistry depth that the thesis requires [The Energy Newsletter, May 2024]. Penmatcha handles commercial development [Planck Technologies website]. Two-person founding teams are common at this stage in deeptech, where the science has to be real before the org chart matters. The company is hiring, with at least one open role posted on its site [Planck Technologies website], which is a modest but real signal that the team intends to grow past the founding pair.
The honest counterfactual
What bears will say is that materials startups have a famously brutal path from simulation to qualified industrial supply. CuspAI and Orbital Materials are better capitalized and have louder narratives around AI-driven discovery [PitchBook]. NuMat has been at this for over a decade and is only now seeing meaningful commercial traction in narrow verticals [PitchBook]. The risk is not that Planck's science is wrong. It is that qualification cycles with battery OEMs run three to five years, and a small team has to survive that gap.
What bulls will answer is that Planck does not need to beat CuspAI at general-purpose materials discovery. It needs to find one storage-relevant material that a European cell maker or stationary storage integrator wants to buy, and ride the regional industrial policy wave that is actively looking for suppliers like this. The Norwegian advantage, cheap clean power plus chemistry talent plus state co-funding, is a real moat for a company willing to stay focused.
What to watch
The next twelve months should reveal whether Planck can convert its materials thesis into a named pilot with a European storage customer, and whether it raises a priced seed round to fund the qualification work. A first disclosed partnership, even a small one with a Nordic cell assembler or a stationary storage integrator, would be the inflection point. Hiring a third or fourth technical employee from the local chemistry talent pool would also signal that the company is moving from founder-led research to a real organization.
The incumbent Planck has to beat: NuMat Technologies. NuMat has the head start, the customer relationships, and a decade of materials qualification scars. If Planck wants the European storage materials seat, that is the company whose lunch it has to eat.