Our Next Energy looks beyond EV batteries for growth

Startup hopes to double its revenue projection in next ve years

KURT NAGL pected to grow rapidly in the coming years, and Aries Grid is an important signal to investors that the company plans to diversify revenue from electric vehicles, he said.

Novi-based Our Next Energy Inc. is tapping into the grid with ambitions to double its revenue projection over the next ve years and woo even more investors.

e fast-scaling startup, whose core product is lithium iron phosphate batteries for vehicles, is launching a stationary energy storage system marketed at public utilities such as DTE Energy Co. and Consumers Energy Co.

e new vertical, called Aries Grid, will stand alongside its commercial vehicle battery business, which has started early-stage production, and its passenger vehicle business, for which a $1.6 billion plant in Van Buren Township is being built out for production next year.

e energy storage business is expected to begin generating revenue in the near term, ONE CEO Mujeeb Ijaz said. He said the rst major project will be announced within a month but declined to provide more details.

“In our business discussions with utility customers, we can double our company’s revenue projections by taking on this new vertical,” Ijaz said. “ is has been a part of our business plan all along.” e Aries Grid is essentially a 40foot container packed with 78 Aries battery packs — the same pack it is producing for commercial vehicles.

Ijaz previously told Crain’s that Our Next Energy booked about $4 billion in revenue over the next ve years. He said the forthcoming project announcement would paint a clearer picture of the new vertical’s revenue upside.

“We put (them) inside this grid container as a way to move from transportation up to utility-scale storage without inventing the building block all over again,” Ijaz said.

Aries Grid is a product born from a concept first discussed during the announcement of the new EV battery plant in Van Buren Township. Our Next Energy said then that DTE would purchase the energy storage of finished batteries in the plant in a “gigafactory-to-grid” model.

“At the time, when we wrote that agreement with DTE, they said they would like to cooperate with ONE e ectively on stationary storage. And at that time, we had no product,” Ijaz said. “We started to invest ourselves in developing the utility product.” e battery containers — o ered in 2-, 3- and 6-megawatt-hour modular units — can be set up wherever the customer chooses. ey allow utilities to store energy from the grid and renewable sources, such as solar and wind, and use it when they choose. e energy storage industry is ex-

Key market usages are for building energy bu ering, or managing peak and valley energy loads; backing up power for data centers; and for microgrids that collect solar energy and store it during the day for usage at night, for example.

Ijaz said he sees the vertical being 20 percent to 25 percent of the company’s overall business once its units are scaled up.

“ at’s important to investors because our book of business will grow,” he said. “As that happens, investors think about how are we going to get the capital we need to grow a factory to keep up the business that we’re trying to get into.”

Our Next Energy announced earlier this month that it raised $300 million in its Series B round, achiev- ing unicorn status with a $1.2 billion valuation.

Ijaz said he is already looking at opportunities to lease more factory space in Van Buren Township and planning its Series C round.

“I think we’re on a track to being diverse and independent, not required to partner only with one or the other but rather open to the whole market, and that’s going to be our strength,” he said.

Contact: knagl@crain.com; (313) 446-0337; @kurt_nagl

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