Mana Battery Raises $10.15M for Sodium-Ion Batteries

Chunmei Ban's laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder gave Mana Battery its scientific starting point. The company that emerged in 2023 is now pursuing a manufacturing strategy built around other people's factories, pairing anode-free sodium-ion cells with an electrolyte business that can serve a wider set of battery designs.

The Broomfield, Colorado startup has raised $10.15M in financing, led by Voyager Ventures with Union Square Ventures and Buff Gold Ventures participating. Mana identifies the financing as its Seed round and says cumulative funding has passed $14M. The October 2026 announcement places fresh capital behind a team trying to make sodium chemistry commercially useful across defense, industrial power and other storage applications.

Mana's development agreement with Saft gives that effort a concrete industrial relationship. The companies are combining materials research with cell design, manufacturing and qualification capabilities, connecting a Colorado spinout to customers whose equipment has to perform under demanding conditions. For battery buyers, the consequential question is how a different chemistry enters an existing production and approval process.

A university spinout chooses manufacturing partners

CU Boulder's startup portfolio dates Mana's founding to October 2023 and identifies the company as a spinout of Ban's mechanical-engineering laboratory. The current leadership team brings that scientific lineage together with operating experience: co-founder Tyler Evans is President and CEO, Nicholas Singstock is co-founder and CTO, and Ban is co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor. The company lists Evans' earlier work at Tesla and SiILion.

That combination matters because Mana is developing both a material and a cell architecture. Research can establish a useful chemical behavior, while a manufacturer has to decide how that behavior fits its processes, equipment and customer obligations. A scientific advance travels through several different businesses before it becomes a battery somebody can buy with confidence.

Mana's product strategy explicitly calls for scaling anode-free cells through partnerships with established cell manufacturers. That approach allows the company to concentrate on its proprietary chemistry and design while drawing on manufacturing capabilities elsewhere. It also makes partner selection part of the product's commercial development: a factory relationship determines where a promising formulation can be tested, refined and eventually qualified.

The Seed financing supports a company already working inside that partner model. Publicly accessible primary sources establish the round's identity and participants, but do not provide a precise spending allocation or valuation. The reported cumulative funding figure includes the company's financing history and should be read separately from the new $10.15M event.

Two products create different routes to a customer

Anode-free sodium-ion cells begin life without conventional anode active material. A sodium anode forms during initial operation, according to Mana's published development announcement. The design aims to improve energy density relative to conventional sodium-ion architectures while using a chemistry based on abundant materials.

Mana's electrolyte gives the company a second commercial route. The liquid formulations are designed for sodium-ion batteries across different chemistries, so their potential customer base extends beyond manufacturers adopting Mana's complete anode-free cell design. That creates room for a materials relationship with a producer whose own cells retain a hard carbon anode.

The distinction changes the conversation with a buyer. A manufacturer considering a new electrolyte can investigate one component's effect on its existing design; a manufacturer considering an anode-free architecture has a broader set of design decisions to make. Both routes involve technical evaluation, but they create different ways for Mana to enter an established battery program.

Mana says its design can lower the bill of materials by 40% compared with low-cost Chinese lithium-ion batteries. That is a company comparison about materials, rather than a guaranteed reduction in the installed cost of a finished storage system. The commercial argument will depend on how the chemistry performs within a customer's full design, manufacturing and qualification requirements, where a cheaper ingredient still has to earn its place.

Saft brings the application into the development process

The joint development agreement announced on August 3 pairs Mana's electrolyte and anode-free technology with Saft's cell development and industrial capabilities. Saft, a TotalEnergies subsidiary, contributes design, prototyping, manufacturing, testing, qualification and market access. The collaboration follows technical evaluation that started in 2025.

The companies identify defense, aerospace, rail, datacenter backup and industrial uninterruptible power supply systems as target applications. Those uses give their development work a practical destination. Temperature tolerance, standby behavior, safety and reliability have to be considered in relation to the equipment and operating conditions a cell is meant to serve.

A joint development agreement organizes that work before a commercial product is fully established. Its financial terms were undisclosed, and the announcement describes development and validation rather than a completed customer qualification or a purchase order. The partnership's value lies in bringing manufacturing and application requirements into the technical program early enough to influence the result.

For Mana, that relationship puts people with industrial experience alongside its materials team. It gives the company a way to learn what an intended customer needs from the cell while the design is still being developed. Saft's involvement also illustrates why the route from laboratory research to an industrial battery depends on more than raw-material availability.

Samples put the chemistry in someone else's hands

Mana has reported shipments of 5 Ah anode-free prototype cells and multi-kg electrolyte samples. These are company-reported evaluation milestones, with prototype hardware and materials moving to outside teams. They give potential partners something tangible to investigate as the business develops its manufacturing relationships.

The electrolyte route means Mana can participate in sodium-ion adoption through multiple cell designs. The anode-free program gives it a more ambitious architecture to advance with partners. As evaluators work through those samples, the company is gathering the kind of application-specific feedback that can determine which formulation belongs in which factory, and which battery program can carry it further.