The Californian start-up Lyten has taken over Northvolt, the only major European-owned battery factory project, after the Swedish company went bankrupt in March 2025. Northvolt, once seen as a symbol of clean energy innovation in Europe, had been under heavy pressure to deliver on its promises but struggled financially and operationally.
The takeover offers a last chance for Europe to maintain a domestic battery production capability amid strong competition from Asia and North America. The new American owners aim to restart operations and fulfill earlier ambitions, but significant challenges remain, including scaling up production, meeting sustainability goals, and regaining investor confidence.
Experts note that this rescue is critical for Europe’s clean energy ambitions and industrial independence, but success will depend on swift execution and overcoming technical and financial hurdles.
It is positive that this take-over provides a lifeline to Northvolt, new hope for the employees, new hope for Sweden (Germany, Canada) and the chance to restart production and build up some strategic autonomy after all.
There are however still several doubts, summarised by CICERO’s Exploitation Manager, Dr. Peter Tom Jones:
– Lyten has taken over assets worth around 5 billion euro for an undisclosed price;
– Lyten is an American company. In times of Trump’s aggressive trade policies, US ownership can be questioned;
– Lyten is a startup company in the area of lithium-sulfur batteries, with no experience with Li-ion NMC technology;
– Lyten has no experience with large-scaling manufacturing of (NMC) batteries, unlike the CATLs and BYDs in this world. Northvolt succumbed precisely due to such lack of experience;
– It is unclear, where the input for the battery cell production is going to come from. There is hardly any production of pCAM / CAM in the EU (legislators withdrew the permit of one of the few pCAM plants in Europe (BASF Harjavalta, Finland)). And further upstream the same goes for LHM or lithium mines in Europe (cf. Our documentary “Europe’s Lithium Paradox”).
