Company: Sakuu
Founder: Robert Bagheri
Website: https://www.sakuu.com
About Sakuu
Headquartered in San Jose, California, Sakuu provides commercial-scale printing equipment and technologies to manufacturers producing dry-processed batteries, electrodes, supercapacitors and more.
Battery manufacturing has not changed in 30-plus years. Next-generation batteries and new chemistries require factory redesigns that gobble time, impede innovation, and waste resources. Robert Bagheri founded Sakuu in 2016 to enable a fundamental shift in production technology for scaling a new wave of manufacturing capability to improve both profits and carbon footprints. Reducing complexity also supports localised supply chains, allowing OEMs to manufacture batteries closer to home.
The Sakuu Kavian additive manufacturing platform enables a patented, high-speed, fully solvent-free fabrication of battery electrodes with unmatched precision and scalability. It produces a completed electrode on a single platform, which significantly reduces manufacturing footprint, costs, and environmental impact.
Kavian is the world-first all-in-one manufacturing solution to 3D-print a complete battery electrode using dry process, a breakthrough innovation proven to address key challenges in scalability, sustainability, safety, and performance, while also reducing cost. Printing battery components on a single platform directly from dry powders streamlines manufacturing, reduces waste, and lowers energy consumption, enabling more efficient battery components without the environmental impact of conventional wet coating, drying, and calendering equipment.
Kavian benefits include:
● 100% elimination of toxic solvents and water
● 60% potential overall manufacturing cost reduction
● 50% smaller factory footprint
● 55% reduction of CO2 emissions
● 40% potential lower energy consumption
● 30% potential lower operating costs
● 20% potential reduction in capital equipment costs
● Less than 1% waste
The flexibility of the Kavian dry-printing process allows for rapid prototyping and iteration, the same speed as for document printing today. Manufacturers can easily test and refine new battery designs and material using the size, shape, and specifications that fit their products, instead of building products to accommodate the batteries of the past.
Kavian supports a wide range of active materials so that OEMs can print complete lithium-ion battery electrodes as well as dry cathodes and anodes of the most widely used chemistries (NCM, NCA, LFP, graphite, etc.), and be ready for emerging innovations such as aluminum-ion and sodium-ion, all on the same platform.
Early in 2026, Sakuu validated a lithium-ion battery cell with a fully dry-printed NCM cathode went 4,412 cycles before dropping below 80% energy retention, the accepted minimum viability for an EV. By comparison, a typical NCM cell might cycle just 2,000 times. This was not a one-off hero with new materials or optimization; Sakuu is batch-processing these cells for a large European automotive customer.
Moreover, changing how lithium-ion batteries are manufactured to use composite conductive materials (polymeric current collectors) virtually eliminates thermal runaway while providing drastic energy density improvements. This is not a new architecture, but changing the production platform to support a multi-material dry-printing process makes these safer batteries economically feasible even within the U.S.
Kavian became available for commercial orders in 2025. Sakuu has already delivered hundreds of meters of dry electrode to battery manufacturing and EV customers.
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