Battery materials startup Sila has raised $300 million in private funding to expand its silicon-carbon anode materials factory in Moses Lake, Washington. The round was led by Atreides Management and Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from 8VC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. TechCrunch

The Moses Lake facility began production in September 2025 and currently produces enough silicon-carbon anode material for up to 2 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity per year. The expansion funded by this round is intended to increase capacity to tens of gigawatt-hours annually, enough material to supply batteries for more than 100,000 electric vehicles. Sila describes the plant as the nation's first automotive-scale silicon anode production facility. Sila Press

To understand what Sila makes, it helps to know that a lithium-ion battery has two main working parts: the anode and the cathode. Most commercial batteries today use graphite for the anode, the side of the battery that stores lithium ions when the battery charges. Sila's core product is a silicon-carbon composite material that replaces graphite in the anode. Silicon can hold more lithium ions than graphite, which means the battery stores more energy and charges faster. The trade-off is that pure silicon swells and degrades as the battery cycles, which is why Sila embeds it in a carbon structure to manage that expansion. TechCrunch

The company has existing supply agreements with Mercedes and Panasonic for anode material, and also sells to consumer electronics companies including Whoop, as well as drone manufacturers and satellite companies. Founded in 2011 and based in Alameda, California, Sila was co-founded by CEO Gene Berdichevsky, who was the seventh employee at Tesla. The company has now raised approximately $1.6 billion in total private funding, including about $1.3 billion across previous rounds per PitchBook data, plus the $300 million announced today. TechCrunch

The path to this point has not been smooth. In 2024, Sila raised $375 million to finish construction of the Moses Lake plant, but at a reduced valuation: the company, once valued at $3.3 billion, saw its valuation drop by roughly $1 billion to closer to $2 billion in that round. Bloomberg The plant's construction timeline moved through several milestones: construction completion targeted for Q1 2025, commissioning begun in April 2025, and production commencing in September of that year. Sila Press

The Moses Lake site was chosen with scalability in mind. According to Sila's own announcements dating back to 2022, the location has the potential for expansion to 15 times its initial level of investment and output, which is consistent with the large-scale ramp now being funded. Sila Press

Looking at the broader battery materials landscape, the $300 million raise signals that capital is still available for advanced anode companies that have shown they can produce at automotive scale, even as broader EV market growth has cooled. Silicon anodes have long been recognized as one of the more direct paths to improving lithium-ion energy density without changing the cathode chemistry or cell architecture. The technical challenge has never been whether silicon can store more energy; it has been managing the swelling and degradation that pure silicon anodes suffer. Sila's silicon-carbon composite is one of several engineered solutions to that problem, and reaching automotive-scale production with named OEM customers gives the company a credibility that most battery materials startups never reach.

The gap between 2 gigawatt-hours of current capacity and the "tens of gigawatt-hours" target is substantial, and the capital needed to close it will likely exceed this single $300 million round. Scaling anode material production involves not just larger reactors but consistent quality control at volumes where batch-to-batch variation can cascade into cell-level failures for automotive customers. The Moses Lake site's expansion potential gives Sila the physical room to grow, but execution at high-volume output is where the engineering work intensifies rather than ends.

The investor composition is also worth noting. T. Rowe Price's participation through advised funds and accounts, alongside existing venture backers, suggests the round attracted cross-stage capital rather than purely early-stage venture money. Sutter Hill Ventures, which led alongside Atreides Management, has a history of backing infrastructure-scale technology companies. Whether the round closed at a valuation above or below the roughly $2 billion mark set in 2024 was not disclosed in the available reporting.

Sila's trajectory reflects a pattern that has played out across battery materials startups: the science is proven at the lab scale, the hard and expensive work is building a factory that can produce the material consistently at volume, and the even harder work is convincing automakers to qualify that material in their cell supply chains. Sila has cleared the first two hurdles and has supply deals with Mercedes and Panasonic that suggest the third is underway. The $300 million announced today funds the next phase of that climb.