Is Form Energy OK?

KEEPING COOL WITH ERTHTECH TALENT

Hey there,

Short missives inside today! You have my word!!

The last time I sent out a analysis or opinion focused newsletter, it was a doozy, replete with equal parts digression into the history of America’s foundational governance system and my own first hand experience with how rife with fraught the startup environment can be (and how deeply dysregulating said experiences—and all those in between—can be). To be sure, I’m glad I did, and the feedback from you all was amazing and heartening.

I have lots of pieces that are almost done that will be more “back to my roots,” as it were, insofar as they’re laser-focused on business, technology, and science. For today, though, I’m running on empty, so I will keep this one shorter (plus, I imagine many of you have many things competing for your attention as is). But I do still have 3 cool things on tap:

1. A valuable offer from ErthTech Talent, a trusted partner & friend of mine

2. A cool update on a cool new website (for Keep Cool, lest I be too coy)

3. A shorter piece asking a pointed question or two about a specific climate tech company. I might start doing these <1,000 word posts more often. What do you think about newsletters called “Keep Cool Crumbs?” Feels cool to me.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: A HIGH-VALUE OFFER FROM ERTHTECH TALENT

In this market, you may well need to take some risks (or “swings,” as I often say), whether to stay afloat or simply because, well, it feels like anything goes. That said, hiring the best possible sales team to scale your business probably isn't the place to take on massive risk.

Instead, find & hire qualified, high-calibre, U.S.-based sales talent with ErthTech Talent.

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HOT OFF THE SOURCE CODE!

💅 Keep Cool’s website got a facelift! A million thanks to Brett Cornick for offering to craft this beautiful site of his own volition, executing on it thoughtfully, and being a homie through and through.

I'm beyond happy with it. It’s also a good precursor to more good stuff to come.

We're still soft-launching this for now so as not to mess up SEO (something I know very little about). So while subscribe.keepcool.co is the latest & gr8est page, keepcool.co still exists, too, in case that's where you prefer to peruse new releases & browse old ones.

Check it out, have a look around, & let us know what you think.

Again, myriad thanks to you, Brett!

KEEP COOL CRUMBS: IS FORM ENERGY OK?

Even before the entire world economic order, which was previously predicated in no small part on the U.S. largely acting as a cooperative rather than competitive global trade partner, got flipped on its head, there were plenty of climate tech companies, especially in the battery space, that were and/or are struggling. Many have gone under or shuttered operations early and returned capital to investors.

Manufacturing is hard. Period. Intercalation Station wrote about this well in the wake of Northvolt’s staggering demise. I'll be the first to acknowledge my limitations here. I have no experience in manufacturing, let alone in building a large-scale production company for a novel technology (in Form’s case, iron-air batteries designed for multi-day energy storage) that has never been deployed at scale. I can’t fathom the challenges of running such an enterprise in normal economic conditions. Enter our current macroeconomic, policy, and geopolitical environment? Forget it; I’d rather be a broke, dilettante farmer.

Still, 18 or even 12 months ago, Northvolt was held up by many as a sterling example of climate tech 2.0's promise. That story then unraveled with alarming speed, surprising many. I still don’t think we’ve talked about it enough, frankly.

I'm not suggesting Form Energy faces a similar fate. Still, no shortage of concern about the company has crept into my sub, semi, and now, front and center, consciousness of late. These concerns bear consideration as we all evaluate the current generation of well-funded climate tech companies and what, if any, actual progress they’re making.

Said differently, as someone who closely tracks this space and pays particular attention to companies, technologies, and trends attracting significant capital, whether financial, human, or otherwise, Form's extended silence on progress of late gives me pause.

Entertaining an absence

As was the case with Northvolt, it’s a big L when companies that received a lot of funding and fawning media and investor attention go belly up. It spooks investors and policymakers. Catalyzes questioning of dozens of other businesses. It deflates the entire ecosystem’s vibe. Especially when there’s little warning and it comes as a shock to many.

Of course, no company loves publicizing that it might be struggling. But there’s a difference between being quiet for a bit versus concealing internal turmoil entirely. Companies might, say, at minimum, consider keeping the public apprised of what’s going on, especially when they, like Form, have benefited from public, taxpayer dollars.

Specifically, here’s why I’m worried about Form. It’s not all that complicated:

• Like Northvolt was, Form Energy is a company many people, companies, investors, and even policymakers have great expectations for; in October, it raised more than $400M in Series F financing and has raised more than $1B in total. “Great Expectations” can, as in Dickens’ novel, be stifling in their own right.

• Form’s been working on its tech since 2017, when it was founded. That’s neither here nor there; these things take time. But it’s not like it hasn’t had time.

• The company, capitalized to the tune of $1.2 billion, has released no press release in 2025. At least not as listed on their own website. The year is 29% over.

My biggest concerns: The company noted last year that it is targeting 2025 for commercial deliveries. Could still happen. In service of editorial balance, Form’s “Form Factory 1” production facility in Weirton, West Virginia, was built quite quickly and is purportedly close to completion. That said, the company also once noted that it aimed to begin commercial production of actual batteries by the end of 2024. 

That deadline has clearly passed. We’re closer to the mid-point of 2025 now than not. Sans any evidence of commercial production, let alone deliveries to customers or actual deployment of batteries. So far in 2025, all I’ve seen re: Form are articles from local papers discussing layoffs and restructuring at its Form Factor 1 facility (see here and here).

My secondary concern: I’ve reached out to the company for comment several times via their formal channels over the past few quarters. No dice. I’ve asked the questions I’m probing aloud here on several social media platforms, again, over the course of months. Still, no dice. I get it, this isn’t the WSJ or Bloomberg Green. But still. Crickets!

Keeping cool while asking the hard questions

I genuinely hope that my gut feel and intuition here are wrong. That Form releases a presser hours after I publish this, touting breakthrough accomplishments and imminent deliveries to customers. It’d give me zero pleasure to be “right,” i.e., to be correct in sensing there may be some serious difficulties behind the scenes at Form. “Serious difficulties” needn’t mean the business will go under entirely either; sometimes things just take time, especially when dealing with hardware and how it fits into the physical world.

Where does that leave us? We just don’t know. That’s the real problem. Companies that are (or at least were) on many people’s shortlists as standout success stories from the last wave of climate tech enthusiasm have at least some responsibility to, you know, keep us posted. Especially if and when they fall behind deliveries they set for themselves.

Forcing the perhaps admittedly few of us who pay close attention to who’s still making good on their past promises to entertain a loud absence of communication isn’t fun or fair. It feels like I’m sitting at a dinner party that others and I were greatly looking forward to. And, so far, only half the people I was excited to meet and who RSVP’d have shown up.

I’ll leave it at that for now. If any of you have seen public information to suggest I’m missing something here, I’d love to see it or connect with anyone from the team itself.

OTHER COOL STUFF

OK, there are actually five things in this newsletter. Sorry for misleading you up front.

But I couldn’t not shout out one of my best “manos,” Gabe (who has worked on Keep Cool a lot over the years), for starting to release his excellent writing more publicly. I won’t over editorialize: you should read it. Stellar stuff. Try this one on for size; it’s delicious. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that even 5+ years in myself, publishing online takes courage.

Fifthly, I couldn’t resist sharing this pic I got back from the shop today. Spring’s in the air!

Ciao,

– Nick