California battery maker Lyten announced today that it has successfully brought the last major piece of its supply chain to the United States. The company has begun production of its proprietary lithium alloys — a key component of lithium alloy anodes that are still largely processed in China — in Pennsylvania.
The news comes as the global battery industry grapples with Trump’s trade war with China and its repercussions for critical minerals. Though domestic battery manufacturing has doubled in the last two years, most battery makers in the U.S. (including Tesla’s gigafactory in Nevada) still import at least half of their components. And because China is a key supplier, the escalating tariff uncertainty has left manufacturers and developers scrambling.
Lyten, which makes lithium-sulfur batteries, is now sourcing its lithium metal feedstock from the eastern U.S., manufacturing the alloy in Pennsylvania, and converting it into lithium metal foils at its California manufacturing facility. The company brought its cathode supply chain to the U.S. in 2023, and then turned its attention to the anode supply chain. Finalizing that last component, the company said, makes Lyten “the only battery manufacturer in the U.S. shielded from tariffs and critical mineral risk.”
Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief sustainability and marketing officer, told Latitude Media that the global scramble caused by tariffs has led to a “significant spike” in the company’s pipeline in the last quarter. That’s because when faced with geopolitical risk, companies that were “theoretically interested” in the benefits of lithium-sulfur suddenly want to move very rapidly, Norman added.
And that spike isn’t just from military customers seeking batteries for drones (which is Lyten’s first target market), Norman said. In fact, the biggest demand growth is coming from stationary storage developers — a trend he attributes in part to the ever-growing needs of data centers.
The brownfields to come
Lyten’s decision to onshore its supply chain came well before Trump took office for the second time. But it’s not the only way that company has insulated itself from the market uncertainty that has rocked clean energy since January, intentionally or otherwise. The company’s manufacturing strategy is also well-suited to benefit from an industry downturn.
That’s because Lyten’s capital-light approach is largely based on brownfield development: converting shuttered lithium ion factories into lithium-sulfur factories, all for much cheaper than building from scratch.
It’s a strategy they executed for the first time last fall, when Swedish battery maker Northvolt, amid financial distress, shut down its California subsidiary Cuberg. In late August, when equipment from Cuberg’s San Leandro production facility went up for auction, Lyten took over the facility lease and bought out all the equipment in a single deal. The company expects to start shipping batteries out of that facility in 2026.
In the wake of that deal, Norman told Latitude Media, Lyten established a formal mergers and acquisitions team internally, whose focus is on surveying available assets as they come up for sale and finding those that fit Lyten’s expansion needs. And the ongoing tariff situation and the potential for export controls on key critical minerals could be giving that critical new team a lot more work.
“We are already seeing that uncertainty in the market,” Norman said. “Those that are dependent on that supply chain and don’t really have a near-term path around it, it’s going to be more difficult to raise capital, it’s going to be difficult to continue to fund operations, and that brings a strain, and potentially brings assets onto the market.”
Lyten is already seeing both equipment and full facilities come up for sale, he added, and their M&A team is seeing “growing opportunities” for the company to expand manufacturing to meet the new demand.
The Northvolt of North America?
Lyten’s approach to battery manufacturing uses sulfur — instead of the more expensive, and potentially more vulnerable to market upheaval, metals found in traditional batteries — and pairs it with lithium metal.
The outcome, at least according to Lyten, is a higher energy density battery that is made from fewer ingredients and also lighter. And it’s also a battery that is significantly less dependent on a Chinese supply chain.
That’s a promise Northvolt also pursued. Northvolt’s ambitious plan involved creating an entire battery ecosystem in Europe from scratch to supply European OEMs, in just a matter of years.
But the company, which was once valued at $12 billion, also fell victim to global geopolitical headwinds. In 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, hampering global supply chains and sending lithium prices through the roof. Interest rates began to increase, and the EV market outside of China began to slow. Northvolt fell behind on production, scrapped plans to open a new factory, and pushed off a much-anticipated IPO. In November, when Northvolt filed for bankruptcy, many experts agreed that the company had tried to do too much, too soon.
Lyten is hoping to avoid that same fate by using what it characterizes as a “last-minute” approach to manufacturing: building capacity only once orders are in hand. That’s part of why the new M&A team, always on the lookout for expansion opportunities, has to be able to move fast, Norman said.
“We have made some adjustments to our strategy to make sure that we have the right funding available, the right resources available, the right relationships available, to be able to turn and move on those opportunities quickly,” he said.
Moving at the last minute comes with its own challenges, of course. In light of the tariffs, for instance, the company’s customers want to know how fast Lyten can deliver batteries.
“The uncertainty…has driven the speed to market being much more important to customers, because they need that alternative now,” Norman said. “And that’s helping drive us to be able to move faster.”
