Company

About

Nexeon® is a company founded on innovation. We encourage our diverse, multi-disciplined staff to generate great ideas, then nurture those ideas to maximise their potential.

We believe in taking a dynamic approach, high on flexibility and speed of action, yet we’re also relentlessly commercially focused. Our flat management structure ensures that everyone’s voice is heard.

In many ways, we’re the modern agile organisation, but make no mistake, we’re solidly grounded and professionally run, with elements of best practice learned from our time working with some of the world’s largest organisations.

Nexeon recruits its talent from around the world

At a glance:

Nexeon® is a battery materials and licensing company working with product OEMs and battery companies to enable the next generation of lithium-ion batteries.

Nexeon’s silicon materials incorporated in battery anodes enable significantly greater energy density and battery capacity to be achieved, providing lighter batteries with more power and longer lifetime between charges.

Facilities

The company has established offices in the UK and Japan. In the UK, Nexeon has commissioned a state-of-the art process development and manufacturing facility. The facility has been built to be highly versatile and able to handle a wide range of materials and reagents. It also enables the company to understand how its materials will perform in commercial production conditions. The ‘drop-in’ nature of Nexeon’s materials means that they do not require significant changes to existing Li ion battery manufacturing processes.

In Japan, Nexeon’s team is ideally located close to its customer base, with a team of dedicated scientists and engineers recruited from the industry.

Our Team

Nexeon has a strong multi-disciplinary technical team with a range of expertise in:

Inorganic chemistry and synthesis
Electronic design
Battery technology
Process engineering
Characterisation and testing

Nexeon’s Japan facilities at Yokohama focus principally on supporting customers, applications engineering and materials and battery R&D.

People

Executive Directors

Dr Scott Brown, Chief Executive Officer

Scott Brown has a strong track record of intellectual property management and licensing. His previous senior management roles include Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Dow Corning. Scott has worked in the US and Japan where he worked closely with many of Asia’s leading electronics companies. He was a key member of the executive management team during CDT’s NASDAQ IPO in December 2004 and its eventual acquisition by Sumitomo Chemical. Scott joined Nexeon as CEO in June 2009.

Michael Black, Chief Financial Officer

Michael Black joined Nexeon from ‘smart home services company’ AlertMe, where he was CFO, and before that he held a similar role at Cambridge Display Technology.

Michael has spent ten years at DuPont Pharmaceuticals, following a Management Studies degree from Cambridge University. He has considerable experience in the commercialisation of leading edge technology.

Board of Directors

Christina McComb OBE, Chairman of the Board

Christina has an extensive background in venture capital and SME investment. She is currently Senior Independent Director of the British Business Bank plc and Chairman of the Engage Mutual Assurance Group. She is also a non-executive director of Baronsmead VCT2 plc and Standard Life European Private Equity Trust plc. Early in her career she was a director at 3i plc, and she has been CEO of growth equity fund C5 Capital, and Head of Investment and Commercialisation at Partnerships UK plc, an early investor in Nexeon. Christina was awarded an OBE for Services to the Economy in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Tony Posawatz, Non-Executive Director

Tony is well known in the automotive industry for leading the team that brought the award-winning Chevrolet Volt from concept to production. He was recognized as an Automotive News All-Star and was awarded The Detroit Free Press Automotive Leadership Award. After leaving General Motors, he became President & CEO of Fisker Automotive, the producer of the award-winning Karma plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. He is a licensed professional engineer and has an MBA from Dartmouth College.

Dr Robert Trezona, Investor Director

Robert has been working in technology ventures for over nine years, focusing on cleantech and materials opportunities. He is currently Partner, Head of Cleantech at IP Group. Prior to joining IPG in 2011, he was Head of Research and Development at the Carbon Trust, where he set up their “Research Challenge” technology venturing initiative, which created and capitalised innovative companies in advanced photovoltaics, second generation biofuels and fuel cells.

He started his career in fuel cells working for Johnson Matthey, and then as the leader of the materials and process development teams at Ceres Power, which listed on AIM in 2004. He has also worked as a strategy consultant for McKinsey & Company, where he focused on strategy and operations in the energy, technology and materials sectors. He has a triple First and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and won the 1996 Goldsmiths Prize as the top Cambridge graduate in Materials Science.

Dr Antti Vasara, Non-Executive Director

Dr Antti Vasara has a strong track record in the development of strategy and products at Nokia through his experience as Vice President of Nokia’s corporate strategy unit. He was Senior Vice President of the Nokia Eseries product line of business-oriented smartphones, where battery life is especially important. Earlier in his career, Dr Vasara spent seven years as a management consultant at McKinsey. He has a PhD in Technical Physics from Helsinki University of Technology.

Ian Jenks, Non-Executive Director

Ian has extensive experience of growing leading edge technology businesses. He is currently a board director of Optimal Payments, Birdstep Technology and Econic Technologies. Earlier in his career, he was President – Lasers and Fibre Optics at JDS Uniphase, Executive Chairman of EVO Electric, Chairman of Quantasol and Partner in Crescendo Ventures. Ian has a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Bristol.

Scientific Advisory Board

Dr Paul Atherton, Founder and Chair of Scientific Advisory Board

Paul is a successful serial technology entrepreneur who focuses on start-up companies from UK universities. He co-founded Queensgate Instruments in 1978 and was MD from 1987 until its sale in 2000 for more than $200M. Paul was a Non Executive Director of Imperial Innovations from 2004 until 2014, helping it raise several hundred million pounds for investment in UK technology start ups. He is Chairman of Sussex Place Ventures – the London Business School Venture Fund. He is Chairman of Phase Focus Ltd and a Director of Infinitesima Ltd. Paul is Chairman of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Ultra Precision Engineering. In 2018, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has a PhD in Physics from Imperial College and an MBA from the London Business School.

Yoshio Nishi

Nishi-san joined the Sony Corporation after graduating from Keio University in Tokyo, and became Corporate Research Fellow, Senior Vice President, and President of the company’s Materials Laboratories. The rapid market growth of the lithium-ion secondary battery was facilitated by Nishi-san’s team through their first successful commercial introduction of the high performance battery in 1991. Nishi-san has received numerous major awards in recognition of his contributions to Li-ion battery technology, including the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering, one of the world’s top awards for engineering achievement.

Aisaku Nagai

President of Nagai Tech Office. Battery technology specialist consultant. Aisaku Nagai has a Master’s Degree from the Department of Applied Physics, Tokyo University. He had a long and distinguished career in cutting edge material R & D at Kureha Corporation from 1976 to 2009. His research covered lithium-ion battery non-amorphous carbon material negative electrode, binders, gel electrolyte materials and nickel type positive electrode materials. He was also involved in polyacetylene research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1978 and researched into organic nonlinear optical materials as a visiting professor at University of Pennsylvania from 1980. He was a part-time research fellow at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research from 1984 to 1990. He retired from Kureha Corporation in 2009, and continues to provide technical training and consultancy to companies in the battery industry.

Prof. Leigh Canham

Prof. Leigh Canham is regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on porous silicon, and one of the most cited physical scientists in the United Kingdom. He has been conducting research on differing aspects of silicon semiconductor technology for the past 30 years, and has made seminal discoveries in the field.

Investors

Nexeon has been well supported by its investors, and has used its capital to establish a high performance team and world class facilities.

How we got here

2006 Nexeon founded out of work carried out at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Imperial College, London

2006 Initial seed funding

2009 Fully operational pilot plant commissioned

2009 £10m funding secured in B funding round

2010 Company moves to new facilities at Milton Park in Oxfordshire, and commissions a second pilot plant for higher production volumes

2010 Nexeon produces world’s highest capacity cells for their size at 3.2Ah – better than the capacity of equivalent commercial cells

2011 Nexeon raises £40million for the creation of major production facility

2014 Nexeon completes commissioning of state-of-the-art manufacturing facility

2016 Completion of £30 million funding round, with funding from existing and new investors

2016 Nexeon opens office and development laboratory in Yokohama, Japan

2018 Nexeon leads £7million project to develop significantly better materials for Li-ion batteries – promising greater range for electric vehicles

Careers

At Nexeon we are working on some of the most challenging technological problems of our day. We are developing exciting technology with potentially global reach in applications that will directly affect people’s lives.

Our science is cutting edge – so we need exceptional people in the fields of chemistry, physics, and cell technology who get excited about making a real difference.

If you are a radical, ground-breaking thinker, not bound by convention, a robust thought leader with a questioning and probing mind, and with a strong track record of innovation, contact us now.