RIL enters lithium battery biz via stake buy in US firm

New Delhi, August 10

Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd (RNESL), the newly floated renewable energy unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, along with Bill Gates and other investors have invested $144 million in Massachusetts-based Ambri Inc, which makes batteries for power grids.

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• Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd, the newly floated renewable energy unit of Reliance Industries, along with Bill Gates and other investors have invested $144 million in Massachusetts-based Ambri Inc, which makes batteries for power grids
• The Reliance unit and Ambri are in discussions for an exclusive collaboration to set up a large-scale battery manufacturing facility in India, which could add scale and further bring down costs for the firm’s green energy initiative

RNESL would be investing $50 million in the $144 million financing round, which Ambri will use to build a manufacturing facility and commercialise its technology, the company said.

The investment, which will give RNESL 42.3 million shares of preferred stock in Ambri, adds another piece to billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s energy transition jigsaw.

In June, Ambani had announced a Rs 75,000-crore investment into clean energy, including four Giga factories.

Ambri, which can supply energy storage systems between 10 megawatt-hours to more than 2-gigawatt hours, will make calcium and antimony electrode-based cells that can last over 20 years with minimal degradation and are considered more economical than lithium-ion batteries. — PTI