Battery firm prepares for big move to Methuen
Moving day is fast approaching for Siyu Huang and her team at Factorial Energy.
Later this spring, Factorial’s founder and chief executive plans to lead her battery company out of crowded digs in Woburn to its new test plant in Methuen, putting administrative functions and research labs under the same roof as manufacturing operations. Huang sees it as a major milestone in Factorial’s quest toward commercialization: She hopes to be making solid-state electric batteries for vehicles on a large scale within the next three years.
The move is also an important milestone for the state’s efforts to spark a bigger climate-tech economy. Governor Maura Healey’s administration is pinning its hopes on companies such as Factorial working on the next generation of climate-friendly technology, and wants to use state incentives to spur test sites such as the one Factorial opened in Methuen last fall, as well as bigger plants down the road. (Factorial was awarded $680,000 in state tax credits in 2022, along with about $2 million in municipal tax relief, for the Methuen plant.)
Huang started the company that would become Factorial in her dorm room at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., roughly a decade ago. She moved to the Boston area in part because she was told this is a hotspot for engineering talent and other high-tech expertise, and started out at the
CIC in Cambridge before moving to Woburn. By 2022, she had raised hundreds of millions in equity for the firm, including $200 million in a funding round that year led by automakers MercedesBenz and Stellantis. The car companies — Hyundai is also an investor — are betting Factorial’s “solid state” technology will offer a longer-range battery than the standard lithium-ion tech in use today. Factorial’s batteries would also weigh less, and be much less flammable.
Today, Factorial employs more than 200 people, a number that will continue to grow, perhaps by another 10 to 20 percent this year. Huang hopes the company can get involved in civic affairs in its new hometown. And she made her first appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum in January, in part to increase Factorial’s global profile.
“This industry needed different technology to drive it forward,” Huang said. “We can work closely with our suppliers and our customers to drive