TDK Ventures Invests in Glimpse, Builders of a Next Generation Battery Quality Management Platform

TDK Corporation (TSE: 6762) announced that subsidiary TDK Ventures, Inc. is investing, through its Fund EX1, in battery quality management company Glimpse’s $10M Series A Round. Glimpse will use this investment to propel scanning throughput and serve new lighthouse customers in the battery and non-battery segments. Glimpse’s mission to drive high-yield battery manufacturing while preventing failures and recalls in battery-powered products aligns perfectly with TDK Ventures’ Fund EX1 mandate to enable safe energy transformation. The $150 million (USD) Fund EX1 focuses on both European and North American-based electrification and decarbonization startups in Seed through Series B stages. It is part of TDK Ventures’ commitment to advance cleantech and sustainable energy solutions worldwide.

The battery storage market for mobility and stationary applications has grown nearly sixfold since 2020, and is projected to grow another fivefold by 2030, reaching over 3 TWh for mobility and 0.5–1.5 TWh for stationary storage. This market size represents over $400B in battery revenue. Despite this momentum, maintaining high and consistent quality has proven challenging for battery manufacturers. High profile EV recalls, which can effect hundreds of thousands of vehicles and incur costs up to $1.9B, threaten to slow down global energy transformation by harming consumer confidence; battery recalls also affect consumer devices, industrial goods, and mobility. These recalls rose 533% between 2018 and 2023 and could slow down energy transformation in US/Europe. Furthermore, faulty lithium-ion batteries are well-documented as a cause of fires, posing significant dangers in certain environments. From a commercial perspective, low yields can greatly increase the cost of battery cell production, with each additional percentage point of yield loss costing millions of dollars per year.

TDK Ventures has been searching for a company with the right combination of team, technology, and business model to tackle this enormous battery quality challenge. The three cofounders of Somerville, MA-based Glimpse bring 30 years of experience in various aspects of battery technology, allowing them to build a solution tailor-made for battery quality control. This impressive team has built a quality management solution that seamlessly integrates into battery quality control workflows, while also creating previously inaccessible insights. Their software suite is compatible with a wide range of existing industrial CT scanning hardware, making it suitable for deployment in any gigafactory, most of which are already equipped with several CT scanners.

Less than a year since launching its X-ray powered quality management solution, Glimpse is proud to include some of the world's leading producers of battery cells and battery-powered products among its customers, including Lucid Motors and NASA. Over the course of this year, Glimpse has drastically improved battery cell CT images’ throughput by a factor of 30 and has set its sights on achieving sub-second scans while maintaining high image quality. While increasing the amount of data available to quality control (QC) teams, Glimpse is also innovating on the way QC teams share and review data. The Glimpse PortalTM, an end-to-end encrypted web application, allows teams to analyze and share 3D CT scans collaboratively from any standard company-issued laptop. Glimpse has unveiled a free 1000-cell demo to help users understand the power of accessible 3D CT scan data.

“The battery quality challenge is underappreciated given its criticality to global electrification efforts,” said Nicolas Sauvage, President, TDK Ventures. “Glimpse’s 3D CT scanning inspection provides exceptionally rich insights into battery quality while providing a clear pathway for high scalability. Their goal to enable quality throughout the battery value chain is in perfect alignment with TDK Ventures’ mission to invest in companies that bring positive impact to the world. With TDK’s historic strength in battery development and production, we are uniquely positioned to support innovations like Glimpse’s that drive industry advancement. Glimpse is a small company with large ambitions. We are excited to support them and be a part of their journey. I am personally thrilled to join the board of Glimpse and contribute to their continued success.”

“Glimpse was founded on the premise that the battery industry has spent the last two decades focusing on scaling up cell production facilities and rapidly improving cell performance, while relying on an insufficient set of quality control tools,” said Glimpse Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Eric Moch. “Our goal at Glimpse is to ensure that every cell in any battery-powered product is free of manufacturing defects. We're excited to welcome TDK Ventures as a sophisticated partner with a proven track record of early investment in high-growth deep-technology ventures.”

TDK Ventures I www.tdk-ventures.com

Glimpse | https://glimp.se