Tozero operates a pilot plant in Germany that reclaims lithium and graphite from black mass using a water-based carbonation recovery process that avoids harsh acids and (it says) emits ~70% less than mining. Its pilot currently processes nine tonnes of lithium-ion battery waste per day and delivered its first commercial batch of high-purity lithium in April, nine months after opening the pilot. The company is building toward a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) industrial deployment to enter continuous production and then scale plants it intends to operate itself across Germany, Europe and later North America. Tozero says its process is lean, efficient and protected as a trade secret rather than patented, and the founders emphasize speed, iterative hardware development and process innovation. The startup claims strong customer demand, noting over a billion euros of off-take interest for its material. Tozero was founded in 2022 and positions recycling as critical to meeting projected lithium demand growth and upcoming EU regulatory recovery requirements. Tozero is developing a novel recycling process to recover critical materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt from lithium-ion batteries. The company intends to return recovered raw materials to the market as fresh battery-grade inputs for battery producers to reduce the battery industry's environmental footprint. Tozero has raised €3.5 million in a pre-seed financing round led by Berlin-based Atlantic Labs, with Verve Ventures, Possible Ventures, angels and founder-investors participating. Notable participants include former VW board member Jochem Heizmann and co-founders of Personio and FINN. With the funding, Tozero will build a prototype plant in Munich, a region where one-third of Europe’s lithium-ion batteries are planned to be produced by 2030. Co-founders Sarah Fleischer and Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann have technical support and advice from Prof. Bernd Friedrich of RWTH Aachen.

Total raised

$16M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Nov 2024