Company

Designing the battery that changes
transportation and energy as we know it

We envision a future in which our homes and offices are powered by renewable energy and our cities have more emissions-free e-bikes and scooters than cars. But we’re not going to get there without breakthroughs in battery technology that can be produced in today’s factories.

Many of today’s new battery technologies are promising but remain years away from mass production. We don’t have the time to retool factories for battery types that may be too expensive.

By integrating a solar-inspired technology into stack-and-seal lead battery forms, Gridtential has cracked the code on energy storage.

Our Silicon Joule technology enables the mass production – in today’s factories – of high-voltage, safe, batteries for personal mobility vehicles, home or office energy storage systems, hybrid cars and industrial backup systems.

Together with our partners – the world’s leading battery manufacturers – we are working to bring our vision of an emissions-free world to life, today.

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Executive Leadership

The Gridtential executive team features a group of serial inventors, entrepreneurs, and disruptors who have galvanized industries, launched companies, and dedicated their entire careers to technological innovation.

Amber Hetzendorf

Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Peter Borden

Co-Founder and Chief Technical Adviser

A leading technologist, serial entrepreneur and Adjunct Professor at Santa Clara University, Dr. Peter Borden developed Gridential’s novel Silicon Joule technology and cofounded the company. His deep expertise in silicon and thin film technologies had previously led him to found Boxer Cross (acquired by Applied Materials), where he conceived and patented a silicon solar cell manufacturing process widely used today. At Boxer Cross, Borden also developed metrology systems using DFM processes, which targeted IC manufacturing process control, and as CTO and founder for High Yield Technology (acquired by Pacific Scientific), he developed commercial in-situ particle monitoring systems for VLSI process equipment. Earlier, at Varian Associates, he led the Photovoltaics Group, setting performance records with III-V and silicon concentrator cells and systems, sponsored by Sandia National Labs, NREL and the Air Force. Dr. Borden has over 80 publications and 68 patents and holds PhD and MS degrees in Applied Physics from Stanford and BS degrees in Physics and EE from MIT.

Ed Schummer

Chief Licensing Officer

As Chief Licensing Officer at Gridtential, Ed has spearheaded and engineered the company’s industry-shifting licensing program for its advanced Silicon Joule technology. A nearly thirty-year Dolby veteran, Schummer was instrumental in shaping Dolby’s first-in-kind licensing model, widely credited for parlaying a once obscure, but novel, noise reduction technology into a global quality mark. Under Schummer’s leadership, the Dolby team created and refined an influential and much imitated licensing model program and made the Dolby brand synonymous with best-in-class entertainment systems. Dolby’s licensing footprint spans 40 countries with 100’s of licensees from consumer electronics manufacturers to software vendors.

Ray Kubis

Chairman

Kubis brings 35 years of management and technology experience worldwide with market leaders in the industrial and automotive sectors of the battery industry. For a cumulative 15 years, Kubis served as President of Hawker and EnerSys, leading the companies’ industrial battery business development across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has also worked in senior leadership positions with Johnson Controls and Exide in the automotive battery industry. Most recently, Kubis has served as President of EcoBat Technologies, Ltd., the global leader in the recycling and supply of lead for batteries. As Gridtential continues to license its Silicon Joule™ platform to battery manufacturers, Kubis’ past experience will play a significant role in scaling the innovative platform worldwide.

Michele Klein

Co-Founder and Director

Michele Klein has been at the forefront of battery innovation, working in research, venture capital, and management roles. She has pioneered energy storage research at Santa Clara University, launching cross-disciplinary battery research, and was Senior Director of Applied Ventures LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, responsible for renewable energy and energy storage. She identified and invested in nine companies, serving on the boards of seven, which included Enphase Energy and Infinite Power Solutions. Before joining Applied, she co-founded, led and sold two VC-backed technology companies making manufacturing process control equipment, and served on the boards of both companies. From 1997 to 2003, Klein was CEO of Boxer Cross, when it was acquired by Applied Materials. She also led a High Yield Technology, when it was acquired by Pacific Scientific in 1996. She has also held management positions at Knoll International and Hewlett-Packard and serves on the advisory boards of two venture funds, the Silicon Valley Association for Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE), SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium and Stanford’s “Women on Boards”. She earned a BS from the University of Illinois, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Advisors

Gridtential is guided by an industry-leading Board of Advisors that provide strategic, technical, and operational support.

Bob Gruenstern

Bob Gruenstern has served as Global Vice President of Product and Advanced Engineering at Johnson Controls. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a BS in Chemical Engineering, Gruenstern has been a lifelong engineer at Johnson Controls. He oversaw the research and development of JCI’s core product innovations, and acted as Director of Engineering at Johnson Controls for 16 years. He is also a leader at Interstate Batteries, the world’s largest battery distributor, where he guides product assurance and technology. He has been a member of Gridtential’s Technical Advisory Board since October 24, 2017, where he has provided valuable engineering and product innovation insights to the Gridtential team.

Ryan Gilliam

Dr. Ryan Gilliam is a Venture Partner at 1955 Capital where he is focused on energy, sustainability, waste upcycling, materials innovations, and emerging technologies. As a serial entrepreneur in the sustainability field, Ryan has developed electrochemical, catalysis, and chemical technologies for the beneficial reuse of carbon emissions, industrial waste reutilization, and production of building materials and chemicals. In addition to serving as a Venture Partner at 1955 Capital, Ryan is the CEO of Calera Corporation, a company founded on the beneficial reuse of CO2 to produce a range of building material products that both directly capture and offset CO2 emissions. Under Ryan’s vision and direction, Calera developed a second core technology, marketed as ‘Chemetry’, an industrial chemicals platform redefining how commodity chemicals are made. Within these two industrial areas, Ryan successfully drove the industrial scale-up of multiple technologies, a business development program resulting in strategic partnerships with Fortune 500 chemicals and engineering companies, commercialization efforts which led to an active presence in China and Southeast Asian markets, the development of a smart parts platform and set of enabling strategic supply agreements, and the building of teams consisting of world-class technical and business talent. Ryan obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in Materials Science and Engineering. On his work in catalysis and electrochemistry, Ryan has 10+ peer reviewed publications and is an inventor on 60+ patents in the energy, sustainability, products and materials spaces.

Bill Tiedemann, Ph.D

Tiedemann brings 32 years of advanced battery research experience. He has a comprehensive background in chemical engineering, beginning with his education at UCLA for a BS in Engineering, MS in Chemical Engineering, and a PhD in Electrochemical Engineering. As the Vice President of Advanced Battery Research at Johnson Controls, he assembled a top-notch R&D team and later built a world-class R&D laboratory, now called JCI’s Battery Technology Center. In collaboration with John Newman, Tiedemann also published an extremely influential paper on porous-electrode theory with battery applications at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. For the 15 most recent years, Tiedemann has served as President of Slab Creek LLC, an energy conservation consultancy based in Wisconsin. He will be an asset to Gridtential’s implementation of the Silicon Joule platform for battery manufacturers.

Timothy Ellis, Ph.D.

As president of RSR Technologies, Dr. Ellis championed initiatives to improve lead batteries. RSR Technologies is the R&D unit of EcoBat Technologies Ltd., the largest supplier and recycler of lead in the world, in addition to supplying large lead-based cathodes for electrowinning and battery distribution.

As chair of the Consortium for Battery Innovation he led a U.S.-based initiative to perform cutting-edge research on lead-based energy storage technologies. Prior to RSR, Dr. Ellis was the Director of Materials Research at semiconductor packaging and electronic assembly firm Kulicke & Soffa. Prior to K&S he was a researcher at Iowa State University’s Ames Laboratory. Dr. Ellis is an author of dozens of scientific papers covering a wide range of disciplines such as metallurgy, semiconductor packaging technology, lead acid battery materials, energy storage, and recycling. He holds more than 20 U.S. patents.