Moss Landing, California, U.S.—Verdagy, a pioneer in scaling electrolyzer technologies for industrial markets, has announced the closing of a $73-MM Series B funding round. Temasek and Shell Ventures co-led the Series B round, with participation from new global investors Bidra Innovation Ventures, BlueScope, Galp, Samsung Venture Investment, Toppan Ventures, Tupras Ventures, Yara Growth Ventures and Zeon Ventures.

The new funding will enable Verdagy to accelerate the launch and commercialization of its eDynamic^® 20-megawatt (MW) electrolyzer module, which will serve as a fundamental unit to future systems at the 200 MW scale and beyond. Following initial commercial unit deployments with existing partners, Verdagy will expand deployment of its novel eDynamic electrolyzer technology to additional customers in heavy industries such as oil and gas, ammonia, steel and e-fuels to support global industrial decarbonization.

“Verdagy is rising to the challenge to accelerate the green H₂ economy and decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors, such as steel and ammonia production,” says Vikas Gupta, Partner at Shell Ventures. “The management team has a successful track record in scaling climate technologies from megawatts to gigawatts and they are committed to achieving the same at Verdagy.”

Green H₂ is defined as splitting water using renewable energy, like solar and wind. Verdagy’s technology enables deep decarbonization of heavy industries by incorporating green H₂ at a very large scale. Their technology drives down the investment with the low operating cost of their eDynamic 20-MW electrolyzers coupled with flexible operating capabilities and single-element architecture SmartCells, allowing the large (3-m²) cells to operate at higher current densities. This translates directly to more H₂ production per cell with real-time performance monitoring and predictive maintenance built in.

The team behind this next generation of green H₂ production is led by industry veterans in the H₂, solar and battery sectors. Verdagy CEO Marty Neese brings decades of executive experience across companies like SunPower and Ballard; COO Peter Cousins draws on his past work scaling Tesla’s gigafactories; and Founder, Board Member Dr. Ryan Gilliam is a serial entrepreneur, and founder of industrial decarbonization companies Fortera, and Chemetry. With this strong team, Verdagy has assembled a wealth of knowledge on producing H₂ at scale and delivering winning solutions to customers with urgent decarbonization needs.

"By leveraging our patented large electrochemical cells, using membranes and enabling high-current density operations and a wide dynamic range, Verdagy has dramatically lowered the CAPEX of an electrolyzer,” says Neese. “We have shown that our core technology works and Verdagy is ready to scale globally.”   

“Yara is taking the lead on driving the use of electrolyzers in the ammonia and fertilizer industry. We see a strong need for cost-competitive, clean H₂ to be able to decarbonize and drive the movement towards a more environmentally friendly industry,” says Stian Nygaard, Investment Director in Yara Growth Ventures. “Electrolyzers are a technology requiring a lot of innovation and product development. We are really impressed by how Verdagy is taking on this challenge and want to take part in this adventure. The world needs them.”

"Verdagy’s potential to demonstrate high-current density over a wide dynamic range across large-area cells led us to incubate and write the first check into the company in early 2020,” says Rajesh Swaminathan, Partner Khosla Ventures. “Since then, the team has made significant progress in validating key performance and cost targets, getting them closer to building out a green H₂ economy."

“Verdagy is at an inflection point—going from proven technology to commercialization stage,” says Amar Singh, Head of Group, Bidra Innovation Ventures. “We believe Verdagy can further compound Morocco's unique advantages, such as low-cost solar and wind energy, captive demand and proximity to customers in Europe.”

"We are more than doubling down in this round on Verdagy, we are witnessing how they have gone from a valuable technology to a defensible business,” says Anil Achyuta, Managing Director at TDK Ventures.