Oct 14, 2022

cylib, a German startup for holistic battery recycling, has secured €3.6 million in funding led by Speedinvest alongside Vsquared. Other investors include Lawrence Leuschner with Blue Impact Ventures, Lieferando founder Kai Hansen, CUSTOMCELLS founders Torge Thönnessen and Leopold König, Silexica founder Maximilian Odendahl and Karim Jalbout, CPO at Lilium. Conventional recycling processes fail to recover key resources and have a heavy ecological footprint, releasing large amounts of CO2 and requiring the extensive use of chemicals. As a result, the German company has develo ped a resource-efficient and climate-friendly recycling process. Eco-efficient recycling method Founded as a spin-off of RWTH Aachen University, Lilian Schwich, Paul Sabarny, Dr. Ing. Gideon Schwich, and their team have developed a new proprietary eco-efficient recycling method. cylib ’s recycling process can extract all the materials from a lithium-ion battery with unprecedented efficiency and in an environmentally friendly way. Reusing emitted CO2 and eliminating the need for chemicals to recover lithium and graphite makes cylib’s approach the most efficient and sustainable on the planet. “Today’s battery production is not green. With our recycling process, we enable the future production of sustainable battery cells,” says CEO Lilian Schwich. “For the huge amount of batteries that will be required for electromobility in the future, a circular economy is required. Our holistic approach to recycling helps protect people, the environment, and the climate as much as possible.” The company’s proprietary end-to-end process is characterised by efficiently recovering all valuable elements in an electric car battery from pack to the cell level. As a result, the cylib process is accompanied by reduced CO2 emissions. “We are currently in talks with various companies about strategic partnerships. These include automotive OEMs, cell producers, and raw material suppliers,” says Co-Founder and COO Dr. Gideon Schwich. “We were impressed by the founders’ longstanding experience in battery recycling research, combined with their work in the industry. The team around Lilian Schwich has been working and consulting for leading battery-related companies for the past few years and therefore knows this industry’s challenges and potential solutions. This is a combination we have not seen so far, and we think it will be crucial to building up the leading battery recycling firm,” says Dr. Herbert Mangesius from Vsquared Ventures. The Munich-based deep tech fund has invested extensively in the battery space in companies such as CUSTOMCELLS and Group14 Technologies. Andrej Henkler, the experienced business angel, adds, “Europe is the ideal starting point to build out category leaders in the lithium-ion-battery recycling industry. Cylib’s superior technology, their relationships with established battery players, and the fact that they meet all the regulatory requirements already set them up for long-term success.”