A year after portable battery company Moxion Power shut down following its high-profile bankruptcy, the startup’s co-founder Paul Huelskamp has launched a new venture, Anode Technology Company, with $9 million in seed funding led by venture firm Eclipse.
Moxion, which had raised more than $110 million to replace diesel generators at events and construction sites, laid off over 400 staff in 2024 before liquidating its assets. Anode, founded by Huelskamp and several former Moxion employees, is seeking to pursue a similar mission while avoiding past mistakes. “We started Anode with that goal to kind of finish what we started,” Huelskamp, now Anode’s chief executive, told TechCrunch.
The new company will target industries such as EV charging depots, construction projects and live events by offering mobile battery systems designed to reduce reliance on diesel generators. Its hardware is built around a custom inverter and slightly smaller battery packs than Moxion’s 600 kilowatt-hour unit, making them easier to transport. “A smaller footprint, less energy, might mean more energy on the back of a single flatbed truck. It’s a little counterintuitive,” Huelskamp said.
Eclipse partner Jiten Behl, who previously served as Rivian’s chief growth officer, led the investment after seeing challenges in charging infrastructure during Rivian’s supply agreement with Amazon. “You need a mini power plant to charge 150 vans, and that infrastructure does not exist at depots,” Behl said.
To avoid the pitfalls that contributed to Moxion’s collapse, Anode plans to outsource battery manufacturing to contract producers rather than building in-house. “One of the main lessons learned is it’s really tough as a startup to take on that part of [the manufacturing],” Huelskamp said. The company also intends to use artificial intelligence to optimize battery charging and delivery, aiming to cut costs to near grid parity over time.
Industry reliance on fossil fuel-powered generators provides Anode with a potential opening. “We’re charging our batteries at three, four, five cents per kilowatt hour, and the industry is used to paying several dollars per kilowatt hour,” Huelskamp said.