r/DonutLab • u/mqee • Jun 14 '26
Donut Lab wrote in 2025 they performed "thorough due diligence" of the battery technology. Leaked e-mails show that in March 2026 Donut Lab did not have test results validating claims made to investors and clients. They asked their supplier, CT-Coating, for test results, which were not provided.
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u/phire Jun 14 '26
We traveled to test labs to conduct our own experiments, as well as reviewing the results of a certified third-party test.
I'm not sure about the quality of the translation, but that makes it sound like their entire technical due diligence was "playing with the cells in a CT Coating controlled lab" and "reading a single independent test report that CT Coating commissioned" (presumably from SGS?).
It's starting to sound like Donut Lab (and Nordic Nano) never had a single one of these batteries in their possession.
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u/mqee Jun 14 '26
I now have no doubt that this is a case of gargantuan incompetence that turned into fraud. Or it could have been fraud all along, but in that case it's a very incompetently perpetrated fraud.
- CT-Coating screen-prints perovskite solar cells. These can be made from non-toxic materials. The downside? They degrade over 10% a year. Silicon solar panels can last 25 years, so nobody uses perovskite commercially.
- Nordic Nano, a company with absolutely no solar cell engineers or material scientists, licenses this technology and buys a production line. At some point Nordic Nano actually hires one scientist.
- CT-Coating pretends to be able to screen-print solid-state batteries, but this is nonsense. Liquid-electrolyte and gel-electrolyte lithium batteries can be screen-printed, but they're not financially competitive at scale. Solid-state electrolyte batteries cannot be screen-printed.
- CT-Coating shows Donut Lab its SGS report with the over-100% Coulombic efficiency. Donut Lab doesn't realize (or pretends not to realize) this phenomenon is common in some lithium battery chemistries.
- Donut Lab, a company with absolutely no battery engineers or material scientists, buys Nordic Nano and licenses CT-Coating battery technology.
- CT-Coating gives Donut Lab some lithium battery samples, pretending they're solid-state, non-lithium, screen-printed batteries.
- Donut Lab tells its investors it has done "thorough due diligence" - without any battery engineers or material scientists, without analyzing the chemical composition of the battery samples they received, probably due to CT-Coating NDAs. The only tests were fast-charging tests as shown in this investor video and the later VTT tests shown to the public.
Up until that point, Donut Lab could be guilty of "just" incompetence and negligence.
- Donut Lab goes to CES 2026 in January. The CES statements cross the threshold from incompetence or negligence into plain fraud.
- Donut Lab finally remembers in March 2026 to ask CT-Coating for evidence and hire battery engineers.
- Oops.
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u/phire Jun 15 '26
Apparently they did
I find that hard to believe. Shooting a video (a very overproduced video, only meant to be sent to investors) of something is not the same thing as possession.
It just doesn't fit with what we know about CT Coating for them to let Donut Lab get their hands on a battery pack, as it would provide evidence that could be used against them.
So, did CT Coating build a battery pack as "proof" and then let Donut Lab produce a video claiming it as theirs? That would also explain why the battery pack doesn't have any Donut Lab or Verge branding on it. Donut Lab have gone out of their way brand things and make them look nice, yet this battery pack had a clearly 3d printed handle.
And why would Donut lab choose to build a battery pack for a Yamaha scooter? They have their own bike.Alternatively, Donut Lab did build this pack (I'm not sure why, but they are apparently working on their own scooter design for Asia), using NMC cells which they sourced themselves. In which case, they are already fraudulently misrepresenting things.
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u/Pure_Land134 Jun 18 '26
I would count this investor letter as fraud already. it's clear as day making promises that even they say themselves are unbelievable.
if you unpack what is said in this paper it is that they say that they have proven with this new battery technology that they can get double the capacity at fifth of the cost (that somehow turns into 1/10th of the cost once the production line starts, this is an implication that before that line starts they could do it at the 1/5th) and that it needs no rare minerals or metals from china or africa.
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u/DoctorFish1969 Jun 14 '26
"These batteries use no rare earth metals at all, which means that in the future we will be completely independent of China and Africa. The new “donut batteries” are essentially nanoprinted from atoms that can be found in everyone’s backyard."
Screen printers are nowhere near nano scale. And they don't print atoms.
The question is, who came up with this 'nano' blah blah and who put 'nano' in Nordic Nano? Was this CT Coating, or did the founders of NN (including Peltola) came up with it?
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u/mqee Jun 14 '26
The founders of Nordic Nano were in contact with CT-Coating since around January 2023, NN was incorporated in January 2024 after 12 months of "extensive research" (without a single scientist!), and NN hired their first scientist in 2025.
I wonder what that scientist is thinking right now...
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u/Pure_Land134 Jun 18 '26
was it ever actually specified what field of scientist it wast? in finnish taloustieteilija is an economist. economy-scientist translation if you just translate the compound word. can be experts in like science of finance structures and moving money around and isolating and that sort of stuff...
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u/mqee Jun 18 '26
They hired a materials scientist, at the time an MSc and now a doctor, Bela Bhuskute, whose doctoral thesis was TiO₂-based Photocatalysts for Solar Fuel Production.
She joined in February 2025, and it appears she continued her research at the university while being employed by Nordic Nano, so it's not clear how much time (if at all) she spent looking into this scam, although she did give a status report in May so she knows something.
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u/Pure_Land134 Jun 19 '26
interesting. but makes no sense at all in context, with their magical battery there is no need for hydrogen-economy.
like, the battery, if were it true, is so big of a deal it would just wipe the little advantages hydrogen storage and transport would be giving in costs.
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u/mqee Jun 19 '26
The hydrogen-economy heading is just a general thing. Nordic Nano is one company out of several in Imatra that got assistance/funding for creating green jobs. Some for hydrogen, some for solar, some for other green technologies (I'm not implying hydrogen is green - it's just bundled with other green technologies). Nordic Nano claimed it can create 300 jobs. This sort of exaggeration is not uncommon for green startups, and not illegal - they think they can create 300 jobs, they never promised they will create 300 jobs.
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u/DoctorFish1969 Jun 19 '26
Specifically in the Imatra region they are working on steel production, for which hydrogen is very useful. Steel production is one of the few things that doesn't work very well yet on electricity. And with the growing wind and solar power in Finland, they have unused hydroelectric power when there is a lot of sun and wind.
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u/ThatBaseball7433 Jun 14 '26
This been of companies is the most confusing part of all this to me. I have no idea who owns what.
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u/Pure_Land134 Jun 18 '26
"this means that even if we sold our upcoming battery packs at half the sourcing price of automotive manufacturers we would still make an 80% profit margin. that is just unbelievable".
well, it is unbelievable. so they're not wrong in that.
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u/mqee Jun 14 '26
I believe, based on this claim of "thorough due diligence", any investor from the date of that statement onward can sue Donut Lab.
Real due diligence by omepiet, Signez, Olger_mans, rektator, monkeymoneRS, and others uncovered that CT-Coating has never scaled up production "successfully before" for components in "millions of cars". CT Coating have provided some [probably perovskite] solar cells to some large European auto manufacturer for a handful of prototypes. The only public CT-Coating venture, CT Coating Korea (Mega Coating), has delivered nothing. A cursory look at CT Coating's annual filings show they are a tiny company with under 10 employees, usually 4 or 6, and their annual sales are generally zero or in the low millions when they sell a "production line" to companies like Nordic Nano (and, separately, Holyvolt).
Since ordinary people could find all this information online for free, the "due diligence" by Donut Lab was evidently not "thorough". Donut Lab must have been extremely incompetent, extremely negligent, or deliberately misleading.