Switzerland’s Energy Vault to raise $338 million via SPAC merger at $1.1 billion valuation

Gravity-based renewable energy storage provider Energy Vault is expected to raise up to $388 million in cash proceeds in a SPAC merger with Novus Capital Corporation II. Once completed, the combined company will have an implied pro-forma value of $1.1 billion.

As part of the deal, Novus II is committing $100 million to the common stock PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity), which also includes a number of notables including funds and accounts managed by Adage Capital, Softbank Investment Advisers, Cemex Ventures, and Palantir Technologies.

The SPAC listing arrives just weeks after Energy Vault’s not-too-shabby $100 million Series C round, and provides the company with a robust amount of capital to deploy its solutions in the US during Q4 of this year, with Europe, the Middle East, and Australia planned for 2022.

Energy Vault’s solution is seemingly simplistic: it uses one of the fundamental principles of physics, namely, gravity and potential energy to store and release energy on demand. Where the not-so-simplistic part comes into play is Energy Vault’s proprietary AI software that orchestrates the charging and discharging of electricity via composite bricks and a mechanical crane system.

As an added benefit, the materials that form the ‘composite’ component of these bricks can be made from locally sourced soil or waste material such as coal combustion residuals and glass fibers from decommissioned wind turbine blades as previously posted jointly with Enel Green Power - that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

“Through the deployment of our transformative technology, which can store clean energy for grid-scale deployments while uniquely utilizing waste materials for beneficial reuse in the process, Energy Vault is re-defining the role that energy storage companies can and should play within a circular economic framework,” commented Energy Vault CEO and co-founder Robert Piconi. “We are excited to announce our business combination with Novus and look forward to becoming a public company given our recent advances in commercial-scale technology validation and rapid customer adoption, which require additional capital to meet the global, multi-continent demand.”