The most secretive battery startup in the Nordics just made its most public move. Holyvolt, the Stockholm-based company developing screen-printed solid-state batteries, has acquired US materials discovery firm Wildcat Discovery Technologies for $73 million. The deal, reported by Dagens Industri on March 6, gives Holyvolt access to one of the world's most advanced battery materials laboratories and dramatically accelerates its path from prototype to production.

Holyvolt is backed by an investor list that reads like a who's who of Swedish industry: FAM, the investment vehicle of Sweden's Wallenberg family; Volvo; climate tech VC Course Corrected; and Jacob de Geer and Magnus Nilsson, the founders of iZettle (acquired by PayPal for $2.2 billion in 2018). The company raised at a EUR182 million valuation in its most recent funding round, according to Impact Loop, despite operating largely in stealth mode since its founding in 2022.

The Wildcat acquisition changes the equation. Holyvolt is no longer just a company with an interesting patent and powerful backers. It now owns a proven materials discovery platform that has generated results for some of the world's largest battery manufacturers. And at $73 million, the deal represents a significant bet that screen-printed solid-state batteries are ready to move from lab curiosity to commercial reality.

Holyvolt's core technology is screen-printed solid-state batteries. Screen printing -- the manufacturing process where materials are pushed through a mesh screen layer by layer -- is cheap, scalable, and well-understood in industries from textiles to solar cells. Applying it to solid-state batteries with nanoparticle materials has never been attempted at commercial scale. That is what Holyvolt claims to have solved.

A patent filed in May 2025 and published in November details the technology. Holyvolt uses nanoparticles between 10 and 100 nanometers for cathode and anode materials, which the patent claims improves adhesion and flexibility. The resulting batteries are flexible, lightweight, and -- critically -- eliminate lithium, cobalt, nickel, lead, cadmium, and all rare earth metals. In a world increasingly concerned about critical mineral supply chains, a battery that needs none of them is a powerful proposition.

The patent lists 73 potential applications, from consumer electronics and electric vehicles to heated wallpaper, solar-powered camping van sunblinds, and armor with integrated energy storage. It is an ambitious scope, but the underlying technology -- if it works at scale -- is genuinely versatile. A battery that can be printed onto any surface opens markets that conventional cells cannot access.

Wildcat Discovery Technologies, based in San Diego, is not a startup. The company has been operating since 2006 as a high-throughput battery materials discovery laboratory, using combinatorial chemistry and automated testing to evaluate thousands of material combinations in parallel. Its clients have included major battery manufacturers, automakers, and government agencies.

For Holyvolt, acquiring Wildcat solves the materials optimization challenge. Developing a new battery chemistry is one thing. Optimizing it for mass production -- finding the right particle sizes, binder formulations, printing parameters, and electrolyte compositions -- requires systematic materials screening at a scale that no startup can replicate internally. Wildcat's automated platforms can test thousands of formulations in the time it takes a conventional lab to evaluate dozens.

The Wallenberg family's involvement in Holyvolt is not casual. FAM, which manages the Wallenberg foundations' industrial holdings, is one of the most influential investors in Swedish industry, with stakes in Ericsson, ABB, AstraZeneca, and Atlas Copco. When the Wallenbergs back a battery company, it signals a view that the technology has industrial-scale potential, not just venture-scale optionality.

Sweden's battery ambitions have been reshaped by Northvolt's turbulent journey. The company that was supposed to make Europe battery-independent filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2024 before key assets were acquired by Lyten in February 2026. Holyvolt represents a fundamentally different approach: instead of building massive gigafactories for conventional lithium-ion cells, it is pursuing a manufacturing method -- screen printing -- that could potentially scale through distributed, lower-capital facilities.

Despite its stealth posture, Holyvolt has already demonstrated commercial traction. The company reported over EUR5 million in net sales in its first full year of operations in 2024, primarily from selling machinery and equipment to an unnamed industrial partner. For a company still in R&D mode, that revenue figure is unusual and suggests that at least one major industrial player is testing or deploying Holyvolt's technology.

The Wildcat acquisition positions Holyvolt for the next phase: moving from early commercial partnerships to scaled production. With Wildcat's materials discovery capabilities, Holyvolt can systematically optimize its battery chemistry for different applications -- thin-film batteries for consumer electronics, flexible cells for wearables, higher-energy variants for automotive and defense. Each application requires different material properties, and Wildcat's platform can find the optimal formulation for each.

At $73 million, the acquisition is a significant transaction for a company valued at EUR182 million. It signals that Holyvolt's backers -- the Wallenbergs, Volvo, and the iZettle founders -- are prepared to invest aggressively in building a vertically integrated battery company. For the Nordic cleantech ecosystem, it is a reminder that the next wave of battery innovation may not come from gigafactories but from printing presses.