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What if the reason we can't electrify the world isn't that we don't have good enough batteries, but that we can't make enough of them?
In this September takeover episode of KP Unpacked, guest host Tyler Sellhorn sits down with Alexander Girau, CEO and co-founder of Group1, ahead of his appearance at AEC Summit on October 19th in Brooklyn. Alexander has worked on two Nobel Prize-winning technologies out of UT Austin, including technology developed by John Goodenough, the inventor of the lithium-ion battery. Group1 is his latest venture, commercializing potassium-ion battery chemistry that moves faster than lithium and sodium, and doing it right here in Texas.
The conversation covers why the US has lost two battery technology leads to Asia already (lithium and sodium), why this is America's third shot and it's staying home, and why AI data centers have completely changed the demand equation. A few years ago it was EV madness. Now it's NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all needing electrons and battery stability at infrastructure scale, faster than Group1 can grow. The insight? One person with AI agents is now as effective as ten. And startups don't die from starvation. They die from ingestion.
Key questions answered:
Why is the battery problem a manufacturing and supply chain problem, not a chemistry problem?
What is potassium-ion chemistry and why does it matter for AI data centers?
How much energy storage does the world actually need, and how far behind are we?
Why did the US lose the lithium and sodium battery leads to Asia?
How is Group1 keeping this technology from leaving the country again?
What does re-industrialization actually look like at a battery manufacturing plant in Austin?
How did AI data centers completely change the demand equation for battery storage?
How does Alexander use AI agents to make one person as effective as ten?
Why do startups die from ingestion, not starvation?
What does a special ops team have to do with pre-product market fit hiring?
What does "CEO as chief enabling officer" actually mean in practice?
How do you cross the gap between a Nobel laureate's lab and a manufacturing plant?
If you're in AEC wondering why data centers keep coming up in every infrastructure conversation, a founder trying to figure out how to scale manufacturing without scaling headcount, or just curious what deep tech commercialization actually looks like from the inside, this episode will show you why the battery problem is closer to solved than you think, and why the hard part was never the chemistry.
Our guest today is Alexander Giroud, CEO and co-founder of Group One. Alexander is an Energy Transition Fellow at the Energy Institute of the University of Texas at Austin. His latest venture, Group One, is based on technology developed in the labs of UT Austin professor and Nobel laureate John Goodnight. Also known as the inventor of the lithium-ion battery, Alexander founded Adveno, a silicon anode company out of Y Combinator. He's worked on two Nobel-winning technologies that grew out of university research. The latest innovation spawned Group One, where it group grew from a lab into a manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas. Alexander, welcome to KP Unpacked. Listeners, Deep Tech has entered the chat.
SPEAKER_00
Happy to join. Love talking about batteries.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, thank you for your time here on the podcast and your upcoming appearance at the AEC Summit on October 19th at the Whalen in Brooklyn. Regular listeners might be wondering, where are KP and Nick? Well, I'm here for the month of September interviewing each of our AEC Summit speakers about the work behind their session. Brief conversations, zero fluff. Watch them here, then grab your seat at AECSummit.co before the room fills up. Of course, if you're missing KP and Nick, they will be there in Brooklyn too. Now, Alexander,
we're curious, before we jumped on and pressed record, you were talking about the fact that batteries are actually a manufacturing and supply chain problem instead of a chemistry problem. Tell us more.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, um, you know, when I've talked to people about batteries, you know, they they think it's uh with a problem with them not lasting long enough, etc. Actually, the problem is can we get enough? How do we, you know, we're very good at innovation. We can make one great battery in the last, but how do we make the trillions that'll be needed? That's the problem. And actually, our colleagues in Asia have mastered going from one to the trillion. So that's what we need to do. And part of group one is not only commercializing battery technology, but reindustrialization, bringing back manufacturing and actually going from one to the trillion.
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so get us behind the curtain a little, right? You're you're you've founded group one, you're commercializing the new idea, the innovation is here. What is it that is allowing for us to have the even the opportunity to potentially scale into those trillions with this technology versus another? Because there's got to be something in there that's chemistry related that that's enabling the manufacturing problem to be solved. So tell us more.
Yeah, you know, it it's not really there was a technical bottleneck, it was timing. You know, the world has really been in focus on lithium. Recently, past few years, they've finally adopted sodium. So if you look at the periodic table, lithium, sodium, right after that's potassium. So this is a drop-in replacement, but the beauty of this chemistry is that potassium ion can move much faster than lithium and sodium. Why is that important? Well, AI power lids have incredible need for modulating these power fluctuations and etc. So these new chemistries they have very good performance. But frankly, if we're going to electrify the world, we need over 300 terawatt hours of energy. Just keep that in mind. Energy storage. Last year, lithium mine was two terawatt hours. Lead acid was two. We need 300. So we need everything: lithium, sodium, potassium, tomato, potato. We need everything. So, you know, we're bringing a new chemistry to market, but it's manufacturable and focusing on the supply chain resilience aspect. That's that's really the most important part. Okay.
SPEAKER_01
So I know that this, you know, has come out of your work at the University of Texas. And I guess maybe I'm wondering, like, as you've experienced these different opportunities that you know take the last mile, so to speak, of taking these ideas that may have been spawned in the ivory tower of the academia into something that
can be commercialized. What is it that draws you to those kinds of problems? What is it that makes it so that you're curious about turning a Nobel laureate's ideas into the next opportunity to electrify the world?
SPEAKER_00
Sure. You know, it's uh it comes back to my personality. I'm an entrepreneur, I just choose hard things. And it just so happens batteries is notorious for not crossing that kind of gap. So I like finishing the last 20% of research, building that into a product, and then building a company around that. And that's what we're doing at group one. Most innovation happens in academia without market pull. So finding and developing market pull to get those technologies into the market, it takes somebody with a special nose for seeing what's happening next. And having an entrepreneurial skill set is precisely what you need to cross that bridge. Of course, you need the technical foundations of chemistry and et cetera, in order to notice it, but that that's just the flavors that of venture that I that I choose. But you gotta be entrepreneurial hard.
SPEAKER_01
That's really interesting to to hear you saying you know, using phrases like market poll, uh reindustrialization, right? You're you're saying things like entrepreneurial, you know, you know, mindsets. Like, how do those all like come together as it relates to you saying, okay, there is opportunity not just for this technology to be you useful, but used to help reindustrialize uh in North America? Like, what what it give us the
the through line to okay, now we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this right here in Texas.
SPEAKER_00
Well, there's a whole it is a fantastic long story, but to be direct, the lithium-wine battery was invented by Professor Gooders like UT. However, that technology was lost to Asia and they scaled it, and now we're playing catch up. Same thing happened with sodium. SACWAR technology had its innovations in the United States, but found its way to China, and now they're commercializing it. So this is our third shot, and this was developed here in the United States and it's staying home. So, you know, reindustrialization is almost a necessity now. So I'm actually continuing in innovation. This is our third shot at commercializing technology we developed, we invented. So that's half my mission. You know, being profitable, yes, but you know, stewarding this, you know, it there's there's a bit of a not just reindustrialization, but there's uh America needs a solution.
one, it was a lot of EV, uh, you know, EV madness. And I used to say now the advent of the AI data center has really pulled the need for different battery chemistries at scale, at infrastructure, industrial scale. So to give you an idea, you know, NVIDIA, one of the core companies in AI space is larger than all the automotive companies combined. You then have Google, Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. Everybody's needing not just power, electrons. And batteries provide the stability in the data centers. As you add more power, you need batteries to give that stability in breathing. So it's uh it it really is uh a market pull. Meaning, we're we're trying to solve a problem that didn't exist a few years ago. So it's actually it's going to a point right now where the customer pull is faster than we can grow, which is a good problem to have.
SPEAKER_01
I was gonna say, those are the kinds of problems that entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for, as you know. Okay, so tell us about that that phase of a company build, right? You know, you've you talked about it at the top, saying that this problem is a manufacturing and supply chain problem, even just from the beginning of like how to you know have the right frame on this market. Now that we're in the phase where the the market is is rich, uh, there is an opportunity like uh you know across you know beyond the capacity current capacity, how are you doing with scaling the business? How are you doing with being able to connect the dots
You know, the scientific risk, that's pretty much been been a myorating, you know. But the market risk, customer risk, all is the the CHRS or product introduction. Now getting out to customers. So we're working with customers and they have specific needs that need to be met. So now we're designing our batteries to go into packs that can be used in different ways. Some, for example, in battery backup, some as for buffering, because you have power fluctuations, you data centers. So these are all different applications and use cases, but it's the same fundamental chemistry and science. Now, of course, the scales and and you need a function of people and capital. You know, one of the most enabling areas that we're leveraging is is the advent of AI agents, specifically superagents. And that really helps us in manufacturing because you have line of sight and traceability all the way through. In short, one person is now as effective as 10 people. So we're leveraging a bit of that, but in a sense, you know, we we are we're trying now to make sure product A is the same as product B, product C, product B. So we're now making the uh control charts and making sure things are within spec and deliverable. And so these are all the pains that are beyond startup and academic, and and uh it's it's a good spot to be in because you kind of see the light. And uh, you know, when you're spinning out of technology university, it's very hard though to see the the light market demand. It's very nice when you you see it, but that doesn't mean we're done, we've got a lot ahead of us, but it's like being in a red zone in football. We we've got the football, we just we've got 10 yards left, but we see the end zone.
SPEAKER_01
Well, you just made the perfect segue because I wanted to give you a moment to riff on our theme for AEC Summit coming up in Brooklyn. We want to take that ball, the the final 20 yards, right? As you've talked about when you're operationalizing
and commercializing an academic idea that has, you know, the the proof of the theory, right? But we've got to be able to punch it in. We've got to get it in the end zone. So our theme this year is teamwork. Project success is a team sport. Tell us how that applies for for you and your business as you're trying to enable a power and power storage, the the electrons, as you've said, to be delivered. Uh, how do we make that happen? How do we make sure that that teamwork is achieved, it's its purpose?
SPEAKER_00
You know, teamwork is something I've been involved with my entire life. I played rugby in college, we played baseball before that. And when I think of it as a company, how I see growing and building, we're pre-product market fit. You don't want to grow too fast before you have recurring customer demand. So I focus on keeping the team as small as possible, but as efficient as possible. Think of like a special ops team, like a championship caliber, you know, uh baseball team. You know, every single person has worked together for years, has the amazing chemistry. But my goal, you know, CEO, it's actually chief enabling officer. My job is to put on the helmet and just break down walls for my guys. And that's another, that's another thing that that AI agents truly enables. It makes everybody in their team much more efficient. So, you know, when you're pre-product market fit, product introduction, you want to keep your team as efficient as possible. But I like to say it's it's it's like a special ops team. And so, you know, my last company, a grew to 50 people. Once you start adding more people, it gets less and less efficient. So, you know, you want to keep things as as as plus, you know, communication is much easier, dealing with customers, you know. You you know, startups die because of not starvation, but ingestion. So when you have fewer people, you can pick and choose much more wisely about how to allocate your time and resources.
SPEAKER_01
That makes sense. Really appreciate you taking the time to learn out loud with us, Alexander. Really exciting to hear how you know you're continuing that theme of you know commercializing uh you know strong uh you know scientific theory into actual results in the market. And you know, it's really interesting to just even hear you talk about how much you know your themes are are kind of like the themes that are happening
across the industry for us, you know, in the AEC industry broadly, right? You're you're dealing with implementing AI, you're dealing with how do we create project success as a team. Uh, it's so cool to just hear those themes being rhyme rhyming of with every conversation that we're having. And we're looking forward to having you and your voice with us at AEC Summit in Brooklyn on the 19th of October.
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely. Looking forward to it. I'll see you in Brooklyn.
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