BMW i Ventures joins forces with Estes Energy to accelerate cutting-edge battery technology development.
Estes Energy Solutions, a California-based innovator in materials and manufacturing for high-voltage battery packs, has secured a $11 million seed round investment led by BMW i Ventures. The funding will propel Estes towards serving various electrification markets, including defense, aviation, marine, rail, off-highway, robotics, and autonomy, at the level of performance, economics, and domestic resilience necessary for sustainable growth.
The company's chemistry-agnostic battery pack platform, featuring a modular design, supports both lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) chemistries. This design allows Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to serve diverse markets from a single integration effort.
Key features of the platform include the use of novel materials, advanced manufacturing processes, and architectural optimizations to improve high-voltage battery pack performance and cost-effectiveness. The platform targets rugged, high-demand, heavy-use applications, offering cost-sensitive variants with LFP cells and mass-sensitive variants with NMC cells that are seamlessly interchangeable.
The NMC variant boasts a high energy density of 380 Wh/L, making it suitable for mass-sensitive applications. On the other hand, the LFP variant is cost-efficient, catering to cost-sensitive applications. The modular, chemistry-agnostic design offers flexibility and interchangeability between pack variants within the same platform, reducing integration complexity for OEMs.
Dustin Grace, CEO of Estes, has stated that the company is experiencing a broadening of demand across new electrification markets. To meet this demand, Estes plans to expand its development team, build pilot manufacturing lines, and begin deploying systems to early customers in Q4 2025.
The new funding was co-led with Fortescue Ventures and participated by New Systems Ventures, DCVC, and BMW i Ventures. Estes has now raised a total of $20 million to date. The investment underscores the strength of Estes’ team, with a blend of deep engineering skills, operator mindset, and execution urgency, as highlighted by Baris Guzel, Partner at BMW i Ventures.
The pilot manufacturing line will enable Estes to begin fulfilling strategic opportunities while fortifying the U.S.-based battery supply chain aligned with national priorities. This move reinforces Estes' commitment to the U.S. electrification market and its goal of optimizing performance, economics, and domestic supply chain resilience.
[1] BMW i Ventures Press Release
[2] Fortune
[3] TechCrunch
- With the $11 million seed funding led by BMW i Ventures, Estes Energy Solutions aims to invest in data-and-cloud-computing technology to optimize their manufacturing processes and improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of their high-voltage battery packs for real-estate applications like defense, aviation, and robotics.
- As part of their growth strategy, Estes plans to use the investment to venture into new markets by focusing on investing in technology that allows for real-time data monitoring of their battery packs in various electrification markets, potentially expanding their services to include investing in real-estate properties that need sustainable energy solutions.
