SES AI Promotes Battery Veteran Dr. Kang Xu to CTO to Lead its AI Efforts; Announces First AI Commercial Agreement

Barchart · 10/17 06:00

SES AI Corporation (“SES AI”) (NYSE: SES), a global leader in the development and manufacturing of high-performance Li-Metal batteries, today announced two major milestones in its AI Initiative: the promotion of Dr. Kang Xu, current Chief Scientist, to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead the company’s AI efforts, effective October 17th, 2024; and the signing of its first commercial agreement with a leading global electrolyte producer. This new partnership will harness AI to accelerate Li-Metal and Li-ion electrolyte development across four key applications: EV, heavy-duty trucking, consumer electronics, and grid storage.

“This is one of the world’s first applications of AI in electric transportation, starting from the molecular level,” said SES AI CEO Qichao Hu. “Our work has already produced exciting results, including the recommendation of novel molecules that have resulted in high coulombic efficiency and long cycle life electrolytes—key breakthroughs for SES AI’s Li-Metal batteries in EV and Urban Air Mobility applications.”

The signing of its first commercial agreement for AI and the promotion of Dr. Xu as CTO are important steps toward SES AI’s vision to becoming a global battery material discovery leader with end-to-end capabilities including molecular property mapping, AI model development, human domain expertise, molecule synthesis, electrolyte formulation and production, cell production and validation (from lab samples to A-samples and B-samples and beyond). The global battery electrolyte market (Li-Metal and Li-ion) is currently around $12bn and expected to grow to $25bn by 2030 according to Grand View Research. This application of AI is expected to revolutionize this market and enable new applications.

This partnership is a first in the battery industry and will accelerate future electric mobility with the commercialization of Li-Metal for EV and UAM. To date, humans have only studied fewer than 1,000 unique molecules for electrolytes, out of a total of 10^12 possible molecules.

Dr. Kang Xu, a seasoned expert in battery electrolyte development with nearly 30 years of experience, joined SES AI as Chief Scientist in August 2023. Before joining SES AI, Dr. Xu worked at the Army Research Lab, where he also served as a distinguished Army Research Lab Fellow. Dr. Xu now leads SES AI’s AI initiatives, managing a team of world-class computational chemists, AI/ML scientists, data scientists, and battery scientists to create tangible results applying its proprietary AI machine to real life and commercial problem solving.

“Over the past 30 years, the Li-ion battery has changed the world, from Sony’s Walkman to smartphones and laptops, and now our electric mobility transition. The electrolyte plays a key role—much of the discoveries made in electrolyte development were often by accident, and the field of battery electrolyte remains a ‘black box’,” said SES AI CTO Dr. Kang Xu. “Our AI integrates cutting-edge computing hardware with the latest advancements in computational chemistry to exhaustively map a vast database of molecular structures and properties. Combined with the knowledge and expertise of our team of world-class human scientists, this data can be used to train AI models to generate new molecules which are synthesized at our Electrolyte Foundry, formulated into electrolytes, and then tested in actual cells ranging from small lab size to A-sample and to B-sample Li-Metal cells.”

Earlier this year, SES AI announced a collaboration with NVIDIA, Crusoe and Supermicro to leverage state of the art computing software and hardware (NVIDIA H100 GPU) to accelerate material discovery for electric transportation by mapping the physical and chemical properties of the vast universe of small molecules.

For more information about SES AI and its initiatives, please visit the SES AI website.

About SES AI:

SES AI Corp. (NYSE: SES) is powering the future of global electric transportation on land and in the air with the world’s most advanced Li-Metal batteries. SES AI is the first battery company in the world to accelerate its pace of innovation by utilizing superintelligent AI across the spectrum of its business, from research and development; materials sourcing; cell design; engineering and manufacturing; to battery health and safety monitoring. Founded in 2012, SES AI is an Li-Metal battery developer and manufacturer headquartered in Boston and with operations in Singapore, Shanghai, and Seoul. Learn more at SES.AI.

SES AI may use its website as a distribution channel of material company information. Financial and other important information regarding SES AI is routinely posted on and accessible through the Company’s website at www.ses.ai. Accordingly, investors should monitor this channel, in addition to following SES AI’s press releases, Securities and Exchange Commission filings and public conference calls and webcasts.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements that SES AI believes are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements relating to expectations for future financial performance, business strategies or expectations for our business. These statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the management of SES AI. Although SES AI believes that its plans, intentions and expectations reflected in or suggested by these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot provide assurance that it will achieve or realize these plans, intentions or expectations. These statements constitute projections, forecasts and forward-looking statements, and are not guarantees of performance. Such statements can be identified by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. When used in this press release, words such as “anticipate”, “believe”, “can”, “continue”, “could”, “estimate”, “expect”, “forecast”, “intend”, “may”, “might”, “plan”, “possible”, “potential”, “predict”, “project”, “seek”, “should”, “strive”, “target”, “will”, “would” and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking.

You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Should one or more of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties materialize, or should any of SES AI’s assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to the following risks: risks related to the development and commercialization of SES AI’s battery technology and the timing and achievement of expected business milestones; risks relating to the uncertainty of achieving and maintaining profitability; risks relating to the uncertainty of meeting future capital requirements; the ability of SES to integrate its products into electric vehicles (“EVs”) and Urban Air Mobility (“UAM"), drones and other applications; the risk that delays in the pre-manufacturing development of SES AI’s battery cells could adversely affect SES AI’s business and prospects; the market for air mobility, and for use of Li-Metal technology in air mobility applications, is still emerging and may not achieve the growth potential we expect; risks relating to the development of the UAM market and demand for batteries from the UAM industry; potential supply chain difficulties; the ability of SES AI to engage target original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) customers successfully and integrate SES AI’s products into EVs manufactured by OEM customers; the ability to obtain raw materials, components or equipment through new or existing supply relationships; SES AI’s use of artificial intelligence and machine learning may result in legal and regulatory risk; risks resulting from SES AI’s joint development agreements and other strategic alliances and investments; product liability and other potential litigation, regulation and legal compliance; SES AI’s ability to attract, train and retain highly skilled employees and key personnel; developments in alternative technology or other fossil fuel alternatives; risks related to SES AI’s intellectual property; business, regulatory, political, operational, financial and economic risks related to SES AI’s business operations outside the United States; SES AI has identified material weaknesses in its internal control over financial reporting and may identify material weaknesses in the future or otherwise fail to develop or maintain an effective system of internal controls; the volatility of SES AI’s common stock and value of SES AI’s public warrants; and the other risks described in “Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors” in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on February 27, 2024 and other documents filed from time to time with the SEC. There may be additional risks that SES AI presently knows and/or believes are immaterial that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect SES AI’s expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views only as of the date of this press release. SES AI anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause its assessments to change. However, while SES AI may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, SES AI specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing SES AI’s assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.