Ascend Elements对IRA拨款的豪赌：融资5.42亿美元，能源部撤资，2026年破产

做的是什么生意

Ascend Elements recycles lithium-ion batteries into black mass, then refines it into cathode precursor (pCAM), cathode active material (CAM) and lithium carbonate for new EV batteries, with plants in Covington, Georgia and Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

启动资金：~$542M Series D (announced Sep 2023) led by BlackRock's Decarbonization Partners on top of earlier rounds; $418M in federal grants total, including the $316M DOE award for the Kentucky plant of which ~$206M was drawn before the remainder was canceled.

起因

Founded in 2015 as Battery Resourcers by Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Yan Wang and postdoc Eric Gratz, whose hydro-to-cathode process was developed in the WPI lab; the company renamed itself Ascend Elements in January 2022. In October 2022 the DOE awarded it a $316 million grant toward a roughly $1 billion cathode-precursor plant (Apex 1) in Hopkinsville, Kentucky; construction began that year.

经过

In September 2023 Ascend announced a $542M Series D led by BlackRock's Decarbonization Partners on top of earlier DOE grants, targeting 20 kilotons of pCAM per year at Kentucky, with Honda and SK Battery America as customers. Treasury and IRS finalized the IRA's Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit rules on October 24, 2024, crediting domestic production of qualifying battery components and critical minerals. But construction at Apex 1 halted in 2024; in February 2025 Ascend and the DOE mutually canceled a $164M CAM grant citing changing market conditions, and in October 2025 the DOE terminated the remaining ~$316M grant ($206M already disbursed) as part of more than $700M in manufacturing-award cancellations. Contractor Turner-Kokosing JV had sued Ascend for $138M in unpaid construction bills in April 2025.

结果

Chapter 11: Ascend voluntarily filed for bankruptcy on April 9, 2026 in the Southern District of Texas. On June 4, 2026 the bankruptcy court approved Turner-Kokosing JV's $31.7 million bid for the under-construction Apex 1 plant, a bid challenged by fellow recycler American Battery Technology Company; CEO Linh Austin, who took over in 2025, publicly said the company had 'a long history of fiscal and operational mismanagement, and that its future was very much in question.'

可借鉴之处

当补贴成为商业计划，拨款取消就成了一场流动性危机：Ascend在原料需求到来之前，用联邦资金建起十亿美元产能，资金停供时没有退路。