EqualOcean has learned that Paragonage (Chinese: 盘古新能源), a sodium-ion battery R&D producer, has recently completed a pre-A round of financing of CNY tens of millions, which is the company's second investment from a well-known institution in less than three months after the completion of its angel round of financing in June this year.
Founded in October 2022, Paragonage is a science and technology company focused on the research and development, production and sales of sodium-ion batteries and solutions, and its core team has been conducting basic theoretical research on sodium-ion batteries since 2015.
At present, the company has signed strategic cooperation agreements with the head enterprises of the upstream industry chain. It has also reached joint R&D and cooperation intentions with energy storage enterprises, communication enterprises, data center enterprises, and universities and institutes, to ensure that the R&D process is in line with the actual market demand and technology iteration and optimization.
Paragonage has already established a test production line for capacity building. At present, the middle test line is under construction with an estimated capacity of 0.1Gwh, which will be put into production before the end of this year, focusing on the development and application of cylindrical and square aluminum-shell sodium-ion batteries. At the same time, the company plans to build a 5GWh first-phase mass production line, which will start rolling construction and production next year.
Sodium-ion batteries are inherently superior in safety, wider operating temperature range and higher multiplication rate performance. The dual advantages of performance and cost make sodium-ion batteries more suitable for energy storage, power backup, small power and other application scenarios that require lower energy density and are price-sensitive.
Therefore, Paragonage has also developed different product lines for different scenarios, with the material system based on layered oxides supplemented by polyanions. The company currently has three main products, namely high power Paragonage, high energy density Paragonage, and high cycle life-long Paragonage, which can be applied to small power, UPS, communication base stations, energy storage, and other fields. The company said that all aspects of the product's parameters have now met customer expectations.
It is worth mentioning that Paragonage was successfully selected as one of the first batches of sodium-ion batteries to be evaluated in the country. This also means that Paragonage's electrical core strength is recognized by the industry.
The investors in this round of financing are Wuxi Public Utilities Industrial Group Co.Ltd (Chinese: 无锡市市政公用产业集团有限公司) and Wuxi Yunlin Industrial Development Investment Fund (Chinese: 无锡云林产业发展投资基金). Proceeds from the financing will be used for the construction of the middle test line.