Fernando Gómez-Baquero CEO of BessTech.
BessTech, an Albany lithium-ion battery technology development company, has received a $250,000 commitment from a local venture capital group to speed up product development and hire new staff.
BessTech, which grew out of SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and also has an office on River Street in Troy, got the funding commitment from Eastern New York Angels, a member-managed fund that invests in early-stage technology companies.
With the funding provided by ENYA, BessTech will have received $1.3 million from public and private investors since 2010. The company says it is on track to reach its 2015 fundraising goal of $1 million with the ENYA announcement.
BessTech will use the money to speed up commercialization of their battery technology and also hire five new staff members including a new chief technology officer.
BessTech is working on the development of the part of batteries that allows electrical currents to flow, called anodes. BessTech claims their silicon-based anodes are more powerful and allow lithium-ion batteries to charge faster and last longer compared to batteries with traditional carbon anodes.
Their anodes have potential to be used in batteries for mobile phones, power tools and even electric cars, said Fernando Gómez-Baquero, CEO of BessTech.
“Rochester is one of the places we are very interested in [for manufacturing] because of the resources there,” Gómez-Baquero said. “We are open to working with companies around the state.”
BessTech makes anodes using a chemical vapor deposition process used in semiconductor manufacturing that takes two hours versus several weeks. (See video below)
