Oxford spin-out FluoRok has raised $30m to scale up a process that makes lithium-ion battery salts without hydrogen fluoride, a highly toxic chemical that limits where producers can build plants.
FluoRok, a University of Oxford spin-out, has raised a $30m Series A to build demonstrator plants for reagents and battery electrolyte salts. Orano Venture Fund, the venture arm of French nuclear fuel group Orano, led the oversubscribed round with its manager, Supernova Invest. As a result, the company has now raised about $44m in equity.
New backers include Bidra Innovation Ventures, EverQuest Capital Partners, WS Investment and several angel investors. CPI Enterprises also joined as a scale-up partner. Meanwhile, Oxford Science Enterprises, BGF, Green Generation Fund, Volta Energy Technologies and the University of Oxford all returned. Innovate UK also added about $1.3m through its Investor Partnerships programme.
Why hydrogen fluoride causes problems
Most lithium-ion batteries use lithium hexafluorophosphate, known as LiPF6, as the salt in their electrolyte. However, the conventional route to LiPF6 relies on hydrogen fluoride, which is highly toxic and restricts where producers can site plants. China makes roughly 85 to 90 per cent of the salt, according to Fastmarkets.
FluoRok replaces that route with mechanical activation, which runs on standard equipment. So the company can start from lower-grade fluorspar or from fluoride recovered from industrial waste. It also uses the method to make chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry, which gives it a second market beyond batteries.
Florian de Beauchaine, investment manager at Orano Venture Fund, said: “We back companies whose technologies support a sovereign, sustainable industrial transition.” He added that “FluoRok has already shown its process works at pilot scale”.
What the money pays for
The round will fund demonstrator facilities for reagents and battery electrolyte salts, along with further hiring. FluoRok will also spend it on customer validation at scale and on wider commercial partnerships. Gabriele Pupo, the company’s co-founder, said: “This funding will ensure FluoRok can swiftly move from start-up to scale-up.”
Pupo founded the business in 2022 with Véronique Gouverneur, an Oxford chemistry professor and fellow of the Royal Society. Gouverneur won the 2021 Moissan Prize for fluorine chemistry, and Pupo joined her Oxford group as a postdoctoral researcher in 2017.
Investors have backed the company in stages since then. Oxford Science Enterprises provided an initial £3m, announced in July 2023. BGF and Green Generation Fund then led a £7.7m round in September 2024. Before this Series A, FluoRok had raised $14m, plus more than $13m in UK and European public funding.
A European source of LiPF6
Europe’s dependence on Asian suppliers gives the company a policy argument as well as a safety one. In its EU-backed project, FluoRok says it would become the first EU-based producer of LiPF6. That project receives about €2.5m through the European Innovation Council Accelerator, and it runs from October 2026 to September 2028.
The project plans a small facility with capacity of up to 45 tonnes a year. It’ll also validate the technology at industrial scale and qualify the product with industry players. FluoRok’s project summary describes the use of fluorinated waste streams as a first circular supply chain for LiPF6, although that remains a company claim.
Brussels has also put more money behind the wider goal. The EU’s ReSourceEU plan commits up to €3bn in 2026 to critical raw materials. That could widen the pool of public funding for this part of the supply chain.
Larger rivals already have a head start
FluoRok will still enter a market with established producers. Do-Fluoride, Tinci, Capchem and Foosung already operate in China and South Korea. Meanwhile, Orbia’s Koura is building a LiPF6 plant in Louisiana with capacity of up to 10,000 tonnes a year. By comparison, the EU project’s 45-tonne facility is a validation step and a long way from that scale.
Battery makers are meanwhile testing other chemistries, including sodium-ion cells. Even so, lithium-ion cells remain the main customer for battery electrolyte salts, and that is where FluoRok has aimed its first demonstrators. The next test is whether its process holds up in customer trials, because those trials will decide whether buyers switch suppliers.
