Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, an MIT spin out that’s developing new technologies for electricity storage, has raised $15 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Total and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The technology behind the company was developed by Dr. Donald Sadoway, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was recently named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
“Large-scale electricity storage will be a critical part of reinventing the global electric grid infrastructure, and LMBC has developed the most innovative chemically-based solution that we’ve seen,” said Andrew Chung of Khosla Ventures.
Gates wrote about the technology last fall in a blog post titled: “We Need a Battery Miracle.”
Over the last 50 years, the technology associated with generating wind and solar power has advanced, but not the technology to store it. Hopefully, that’s changing. Professor Donald Sadoway, an MIT professor of materials chemistry, is leading research to develop an inexpensive “liquid metal” battery that will dramatically improve battery efficiency and provide large scale energy storage.
Here’s a video with Gates and Dr. Sadoway describing the problem and the technology.
