Feon opens new headquarters and future pilot manufacturing facility

Feon Energy, a next-generation battery materials company, has opened its new 13,000 square foot headquarters in Woburn, Massachusetts. The expanded space marks a major milestone for the startup as it scales its development of advanced electrolytes—an often-overlooked battery component that has become a critical bottleneck to innovation in electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and grid storage.

“For decades, battery improvements have focused on the anode and cathode, which determine much of a battery’s performance,” said Wenxiao Huang, Feon’s CEO and co-founder. “But now, those components have advanced so far that conventional electrolytes simply can’t keep up.”

Electrolytes, the liquid medium that enables ions to move between a battery’s electrodes, have remained largely unchanged for over 30 years and typically rely on long lists of chemical additives to patch over problems. That wasn’t a problem when today’s high-performance materials—like silicon-rich anodes, lithium-metal anodes, and high-voltage cathodes—were still in the lab. But as these materials edge closer to market, long-standing weaknesses in traditional electrolytes are becoming harder for customers to ignore. These legacy formulas break down at high voltages, increase flammability risks, and lead to shorter battery life, all leading to major barriers to these batteries being adopted at scale.

Feon was spun out of Stanford in 2022 to address that challenge head-on. The company designs electrolytes from the molecule up – creating electrolyte molecules and formulations that are simpler by design yet can be precisely tailored to specific performance needs.

The new Woburn facility was reconstructed to support Feon’s growing partnerships with battery manufacturers, and electronics and automotive companies. It includes space for battery development and customer testing, with future expansion plans for Feon’s first U.S. pilot line for electrolyte manufacturing.

Electrolytes may be invisible to most consumers, but the market for liquid electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries reached $18.5 billion in 2022 and is expected to surpass $50 billion by 2030—underscoring the critical and growing role this material plays in powering the devices and vehicles of the future.

“We see electrolytes as the enabler—not just a supporting actor—in next-generation batteries,” said Huang. “By focusing on the electrolyte, we’re speeding up battery innovation—without the typical capital intensity.”

As the global battery industry races to meet growing demand for cleaner, safer and longer-lasting energy storage, Feon is betting that the key to unlocking that future lies in a part of the battery most people don’t think about—and rethinking it from the ground up.