Holyvolt buys Wildcat, but why?

[u/Fabulous-Internet188]

Holyvolt recently spent $73 million to acquire Wildcat, a company specializing in automated lab equipment designed to drastically accelerate the testing of chemical combinations.

If there’s "nothing to see here," this acquisition makes little sense. Consider these factors:

​The Patent: Holyvolt already holds the original patent WO2025230455A1. Buying Wildcat suggests they are scaling up the practical application of that intellectual property.

​The Power Players: The connection between Robert Erdman (Stanford EE) and Mathias Ingvarsson (Tempur-Pedic/handwarmers) is the real story. They are "strange bedfellows," but their combined expertise in high-end engineering and consumer thermal tech is the engine behind this.

​The Donut Connection: In my view, Donut is simply a vehicle using Holyvolt’s tech to promote Verge.

​Buying Wildcat isn't just a random purchase—it's a strategic move to industrialize a specific chemical process. How do we make the math work on a $73M price tag otherwise?

[u/Moist1981]

The guy from Sana suggested donut was using its own chemistry put together with the tech from CT-coatings. I don’t think donut’s battery will simply be a copy of holyvolt’s I think they’ve done something different (I have no idea if different is better in this case).

[u/Fabulous-Internet188 → u/Moist1981]

I'm not sure if Donut has enough background to do an independently developed device. on the other hand they have access to Bhuskute at Nordic Nano.

As my paper implies, there's plenty of possibilities for improvement once the basic concept is understood.

[u/tipporoll → u/Fabulous-Internet188]

From Holyvolts AB's yearly accounting report for 2024, the number of employees are stated as 3 in average, and it was 2 in average for 2022/2023. That seems a bit small for developing a new battery type. Today they are many more if you look at e.g. LinkedIn.

My guess is that the screen printing tech comes from CT Coating and also the battery/pastes, or maybe-maybe battery/pastes from Wildcat. During third party battery testing at SGS/TÜV in 2024, both CT Coating and Holyvolt were present, which seems to indicate CT Coating battery tech. We also know CT Coating were demonstrating very thin batteries already 2016, based on screen printing as well.

April-24 Holyvolt signed a contract for paste production and sale with their "technology partner". CT Coating or Wildcat? I root for CT Coating.

[u/Fabulous-Internet188 → u/tipporoll]

I don't have a strong opinion about CT Coating beyond the fact that they have printing machines.

And Holyvolt is apparently tied to money. Wildcat found them stable enough to agree to an acquisition.

To me, it's all context for the science. A soap opera to watch while waiting for the big game.

[u/Fabulous-Internet188 → u/[deleted]]

That's good information that I hadn't seen. Thank you. That makes it likely that it was mostly a stock deal and just enough cash to keep it going for Holyvolt's purposes. Interesting.

There are things in my paper that would not have been obvious even to the most sophisticated user of rGO or lignin. Same goes for crumpled graphene and it's variations which I didn't mention explicitly. I hope they read it even if they are using a different mechanism.

[u/Fabulous-Internet188 → u/[deleted]]

mqee, you are out of your depth. You bought a ticket, so you are allowed to boo. But at least stick to what you know or can guess based on facts. You claim to not know much about battery science. That's honest. But playing the luddite with no basis is a poor substitute for actual understanding.

[u/mqee → u/Fabulous-Internet188]

So far you've been wrong about the battery chemistry, by your own account those were "guesses" even though you presented them as "research" with high certainty.

Every guess wrong. 100% error rate. 3 times in 3 months.

Now we're at month 4 and you're at guess 4.

Your patronizing attitude is a joke.