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Firm Charged Up About Its Ability to Make Batteries Last Longer

WILDCAT DISCOVERY TECHNOLOGIES

CEO: Mark Gresser.

Financial information: Not disclosed.

No. of local employees: 30.

Investors: Virgin Green Fund, CMEA Ventures, 5AM Ventures and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Headquarters: Sorrento Valley.

Year founded: 2006.

Company description: Discovery and sale of specialty materials for clean-tech energy applications, with an emphasis on battery storage.

Wildcat Discovery Technologies is fast tracking methods to develop better battery materials and sell them to a wide variety of customers.

Wildcat has attracted the backing of investors such as the San Francisco-based Virgin Green Fund, which believes the firm is capable of achieving profitability in the next five years — from royalties, the materials it is working to discover and licensing agreements with large companies.

The San Diego-based startup is engaged in the discovery and sale of specialty materials in a fairly new space for clean-tech energy applications.

While Wildcat’s clients asked that they not be named, current customers number 30 companies throughout the battery supply chain, said Jon Jacobs, vice president of business development. They include global chemical companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia; a large Japanese automaker; a leader in the medical devices industry; a major defense contractor along with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory; and several small and large battery cell manufacturers.

“Our work is about helping these clients make single-use batteries last longer,” said Jacobs, referring to the company’s focus, which is developing tools that rapidly make and test new materials in the manufacture of batteries.

“The business model is twofold: collaborative research for other companies and our own internal research to license or patent,” said Jacobs.

Faster Process

Local serial entrepreneur and biochemist Peter Schultz founded the private company. A professor of chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute who still sits on the Wildcat board of directors, Schultz pioneered the idea of high throughput chemistry in making drug discoveries, which Wildcat is now applying to the world’s energy needs, said Jacobs.

Proprietary technology enables Wildcat scientists to synthesize and evaluate thousands of materials in the time it takes most labs to evaluate only a handful, the company said.

In terms of the future revenue stream, Wildcat Chief Executive Officer Mark Gresser said the company would profit the most by developing primary and rechargeable battery materials that have applications in electric vehicles, cell phones, computers, medical devices and the smart grid.

Gresser said Wildcat (the term dates from the hard-charging oil industry in the 1880s) has enough money to back research and development until the end of next year, and will be looking to raise additional capital to increase its discovery capabilities and hire more scientists and researchers.

Wildcat isn’t the only player in the nascent battery storage arena. United Kingdom-based Fife Batteries Ltd. is also developing high-performance lithium-ion materials.

While Wildcat’s current focus is battery-related, its proprietary technology is very scalable. For example, Wildcat is a collaborator on a $3.6 million federal contract looking into carbon capture, building equipment for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley to test its ideas, Jacobs said.

Storing Energy

Evan Lovell, a principal with the Virgin Green Fund, a private equity group that invests in companies in the renewable energy and resource efficiency sectors in the U.S. and Europe, said Wildcat is one of 10 clean energy startups with potential that the company is backing.

The firm, which has offices in London and San Francisco, has invested $220 million in businesses that are trying to develop renewable energy or make the use of natural resources more efficient. Lovell declined to say how big a stake Virgin has in Wildcat.

“Wildcat is going after a unique area: storage of energy,” said Lovell, adding that some clean-tech companies have survived by giving up on the idea of building big, expensive factories to produce alternative energy and instead are selling their technology to bigger companies.

“This is a very interesting growth sector, but the road to profitability is a long-term one,” said Lovell, adding that many green-tech startups are either acquired by bigger companies once they start proving their mettle or go public.

In the meantime, Wildcat is looking at finding some great ideas in the chemistry lab, said Jacobs, referring to the company’s 14,000-square-foot space where scientists are putting many new materials through the mill.

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