Robert Piconi was the winner of the Executive Award 2019 in Lugano. Since then he has developed his company Energy Vault to the incredible scale. Energy Vault was founded in 2017 by Robert Piconi, Bill Gross and Andrea Pedretti in Lugano, Ticino.
Energy Vault goes public today after the merger with Novus Capital Corporation II.
Energy Vault set out to solve one of the largest global problems facing the planet today, how to store renewable energy in both an economical and sustainable way to end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. Energy Vault is accelerating the global clean energy transition and enabling a fully renewable world. One of the ways we do this is by utilizing a circular approach that repurposes local waste materials, often otherwise destined for landfill, to build our products. It uses common materials like dirt to make the bricks, even solid waste, that can be obtained locally and does not use cement to bind them together. It does not use ten times the steel and concrete that renewables use relative to nuclear or gas. And it has one of, if not the, lowest carbon footprints of any energy generation or storage system.
Energy Vault, a green energy storage company, agreed to go public via a merger with Novus Capital Corp. in a deal announced Sept. 9 and worth up to $388 million. Once the merger is complete, Energy Vault will begin trading on the NYSE under the symbol NRGV.
Why list now?
Robert Piconi: We’ve had a lot of interest from five continents, a lot of different people are looking to solve this [energy storage] problem, whether it be pairing with renewables or to drive a 24/7 process. We were contacted directly by many of them last year, but it would not have been the right time for us to evaluate going public, given we were just proving our technology at scale, 5MW, and we were in the process of signing contracts. And then we had two announcements – with both Saudi Aramco [which took a stake in Energy Vault] and Enel Green Power [a deal in which Energy Vault will use recycled Enel wind blades in its storage system] – so we started to get traction and now we have eight agreements already executed for over $368 million and about 18 to 20 underway that we haven’t announced or are in the process of getting executed. At the beginning of this year, we started a series C process and we announced $100 million in August. Earlier this year, we were approached by one of our investor groups – who saw we were raising the series C to fund our next phase of growth – and they said ‘why don’t we work together on getting your next five years and your business plan fully funded?’
New investment subscription with Korea Zinc upsizes previously announced PIPE from $100 million to $150 million in conjunction with Energy Vault’s agreement to become a publicly-traded company through merger with Novus Capital Corporation II.
Strategic partnership formed with Sun Metals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Korea Zinc, focused on future deployment beginning in mid-2022 of Energy Vault’s proprietary energy storage and energy management software technology to support decarbonization of Sun Metals’ zinc refinery operations.
In conjunction with Korea Zinc’s $50 million PIPE commitment, approximately 90% of the minimum cash condition has been satisfied.
As part of the transaction, Novus Chairman Larry Paulson will join the post-closing Board of Directors, bringing over 30 years of global executive and technology leadership roles from Fortune 500 public companies including Qualcomm, BrightPoint and Nokia. The newly combined company is expected to be listed on the NYSE under the new ticker symbol “NRGV” and it will go public in February 2022.
Congratulations Robert Piconi and everyone else involved on all your success so far and we believe that it is just the beginning!
Source:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210909005477/en/