TaiSan

TaiSan is a UK battery materials company developing quasi-solid-state sodium batteries for the electric vehicle industry. Founded in 2022 by Kazakh entrepreneur Sanzhar Taizhan and based in Cambridge, the company has built proprietary electrolyte and anode materials for a sodium-ion cell architecture that it claims delivers automotive-grade energy density with a projected 20 percent cost saving over lithium-ion equivalents, while being compatible with existing lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities.

The shift to electric vehicles is driving one of the most significant transitions in the automotive supply chain in a century. Sodium-ion batteries have attracted growing interest as a potential successor or complement to lithium-ion chemistry, offering cost, sustainability, and safety advantages — sodium is abundant, widely distributed, and avoids the supply chain dependencies associated with lithium, cobalt, and nickel. The global sodium-ion battery market is expected to reach £1 billion in value by 2028 and a capacity of 186 GWh per year by 2032, with leading automotive OEMs and battery manufacturers investing in the chemistry.

TaiSan's technology centres on a quasi-solid electrolyte paired with a novel metal anode. The quasi-solid format — using a small proportion of liquid electrolyte within a predominantly solid matrix — positions the company to commercialise faster than fully solid-state approaches while delivering meaningful improvements in energy density, safety, and manufacturing scalability over conventional liquid-electrolyte sodium cells. The company has signed memoranda of understanding with automotive manufacturers from seven countries and has received nearly £500,000 in prior funding from UK government and research organisations including the Department for Transport, The Faraday Institution, Innovate UK, and the Advanced Propulsion Centre.

TaiSan raised £1.3 million in a pre-seed round led by EIT InnoEnergy and TSP Ventures, with participation from HEARTFELT_ and Exergon — European funds with direct connections to leading automotive OEMs and battery gigafactories. The funding is being used to advance development of TaiSan's electrolyte and anode materials, progress agreed customer milestones, and build the supply relationships needed to commercialise the technology through licensing to Tier 1 battery and automotive OEMs. Founder Sanzhar Taizhan is a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow and Forbes Kazakhstan 30 Under 30 honouree.