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. Lyten is also acquiring Northvolt’s assets in Germany and is in negotiations for the Northvolt Six project in Quebec’s Montérégie region. Northvolt, once regarded as a flagship of clean energy innovation in Europe, had faced heavy pressure to deliver on its promises but struggled financially and operationally.
The takeover by Lyten may give Europe one last chance to maintain domestic battery production capacity, at a time of strong competition from Asia and North America. The new American owners aim to restart operations and pursue Northvolt’s original ambitions. Yet major challenges remain, including scaling up production, meeting sustainability targets, and restoring investor confidence.
According to SIM² Director Dr. Peter Tom Jones, the takeover does bring important positive elements: it provides a lifeline to Northvolt, new hope for its employees, a perspective for Sweden, Germany and possibly Canada, and the chance to rebuild some degree of strategic autonomy in Europe. At the same time, his analysis points to a number of concerns:
• Lyten has taken over assets worth around €5 billion for an undisclosed price;
• Lyten is a start-up in lithium–sulfur batteries and has no experience with Li-ion NMC technology;
• Lyten has no track record in large-scale battery manufacturing, whereas global players like CATL and BYD dominate this field; Northvolt itself failed partly for this reason;
• It remains unclear where the input materials for cell production will be sourced.
At present there is hardly any production of pCAM/CAM in the EU. In 2024 legislators withdrew the permit of one of the few European plants, BASF Harjavalta in Finland. Further upstream, European lithium mining projects remain uncertain, as highlighted in SIM²’s documentary Europe’s Lithium Paradox.
SIM² continues to advocate for sustainable metal production and processing in Europe and for the establishment of a fully European battery value chain. Only with such an integrated approach can Europe secure industrial resilience and support the clean energy transition.
