Open Source: North Carolina just made a big, bold, blue bet on sodium-ion batteries

I’m Brian Gordon , tech reporter for The News & Observer , and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

The eighth planet from the sun is frigid, dark and — most relevant to North Carolina this week — blue. On Thursday, state leaders celebrated beating out South Carolina and Tennessee to land “Project Neptune,” a promised $1.4 billion, 1,062-worker factory in Edgecombe County from the sodium-ion battery manufacturer Natron Energy .

This code name was apt. Natron makes batteries with proprietary Prussian blue electrodes. The three products it markets online are called BlueTray, BluePack and BlueRack. The California company leads domestic manufacturing of sodium-ion batteries, an emerging if lesser used alternative power source compared to its lithium-ion counterpart.

“Sodium-ion battery technology is still in the development phase,” said Feng Lin, a Virginia Tech chemistry professor who specifically researches the technology. “Fewer manufacturers are producing them at scale, and there are fewer products on the market using sodium-ion technology.”

Lin explained lithium-ion batteries have benefited from decades of “research, development and scaling” to achieve superior economies of scale and more wide-ranging applications. Sodium-ion needs to catch up.

Natron projects this will happen by the time it begins to hire in Eastern North Carolina around 2028. And its ambitions in the Tar Heel State are lofty: In April, the 12-year-old company opened its first commercial factory, in Michigan, but Natron says its future North Carolina plant will be 40 times larger.

These expansion efforts have been funded by both private investors and nearly $20 million from the U.S. Department of Energy through a program designed to advance “high-risk and potentially disruptive new technologies.”

And now, North Carolina is pitching in with a promising, if relatively risky, bet. The state awarded Natron an incentive package this week that could reach $56.3 million if the company meets its hiring and investment goals. More than half of this money will be paid upfront to help ready the factory site near Rocky Mount , a city of 54,000 about an hour’s drive east of Raleigh.

Sodium-ion batteries have potential, experts say. Sodium is significantly more abundant than lithium and mining sodium is much less harmful to the environment. And sodium ions have a comparatively higher charge transfer rate, said Katerina Aifantis, a University of Florida researcher who studies energy storage.

The element is heavier than lithium and therefore is “more ideal for stationary rather than portable applications,” Aifantis added. So, think power grids rather than electric vehicles or laptops.

North Carolina has allocated millions on the hope that sodium-ion takes off and a company will achieve something it’s never before done. In this way, Natron is less like the Toyota plant near Greensboro and more similar to recent incentive deals for the electric carmaker VinFast and the supersonic commercial flight startup Boom Supersonic.

If these projects hit, the state and counties like Edgecombe benefit from tons of jobs in next-generation industries. If they don’t, there’s some debate over how much it costs North Carolina as it gets into questions of opportunity costs, performance-based incentives, and whether upfront site costs are beneficial even if the initial company never arrives.

Through another lens, North Carolina’s bet on Natron is a prudent diversification play. As demand for decarbonization grows, so too will the market for alternative rechargeable batteries. In the past two years, the state has awarded several incentive packages to attract lithium-ion battery makers. Now in Natron, we’ll be well positioned if sodium-ion takes off.

Cisco sees another “LR”

Within Cisco , employees refer to layoffs as “LR,” short for “limited restructuring.” And on Wednesday, the California tech company with a big Triangle presence announced its latest restructuring would reduce its global workforce by around 7%.

Most of the cuts will be made in the current fiscal quarter, Cisco said in an earnings report. They follow previous restructuring rounds in late 2022 and another earlier this year . The latest layoffs come as Cisco shifts resources away from its traditional networking equipment business and toward artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

“To focus on these two broad areas, today we announced a restructuring plan to allow us to both invest in key growth opportunities as well as drive more efficiency in our business,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told investors during an earnings call.

How many North Carolina workers may be affected? Cisco won’t tell. How many workers does Cisco employ in the Research Triangle? Again, Cisco won’t say.

But the answer to the latter question is in the thousands. Cisco opened its first Research Triangle Park office 29 years ago, and today, the company is listed as the fourth-largest employer in Durham County. Unofficial databases put its area workforce total at around 5,000 employees — though that figure may be different after three LRs.

Clearing my cache

• Eight months ago, a jury handed Cary’s Epic Games a big win in its antitrust case against Google . This week, a district court judge held his final hearing about what Google must do to remedy its violations. Judge James Donato said his decision will come within a month . He also indicated Google will have to make significant changes to how it operates its Android app store.

“We’re going to tear the barriers down, it’s just the way it’s going to happen,” Donato said. “The world that exists today is the product of monopolistic conduct. That world is changing.”

• Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company received a state incentive this week to create 200 jobs at a future “innovation” hub in Raleigh. Headquartered in Wisconsin, the prominent jewelry insurance provider promises to add these positions by 2029.

• Durham procurement software company Jaggaer (formerly SciQuest) announced it is being acquired by the Austin, Texas-based investment firm Vista Equity Partners for an undisclosed amount of money.

“Vista is a highly experienced software investor, and I’m confident they will be an exceptional partner to Jaggaer during this exciting next phase of growth and opportunity,” Jaggaer CEO Andy Hovancik said in a statement Tuesday.

National Tech Happenings

• Tap-tap. Apple will soon allow all iPhone owners to use third-party payment systems besides Apple Pay. The move comes months after the European Union forced the tech company to enable alternative payments — among other changes.
• A hack may have exposed billions of Social Security numbers. But don’t fret too much, The Washington Post reports . First, these types of disclosures are fairly common (which I guess is comforting?). Furthermore, the data in this particular leak hasn’t yet been authenticated.
• Former YouTube CEO and early Google executive Susan Wojcicki died this week at the age of 56. After joining Google in 1999, she became one of the most prominent women in a male-dominated industry.

Thanks for reading!