EnerVenue announced a $300 million funding round to construct a nickel-hydrogen battery factory in Changzhou, China, after canceling plans for a Kentucky plant. The move underscores the startup's pivot to leverage China's mature battery manufacturing ecosystem while still positioning itself as a global player. The U.S. battery market has seen a surge in domestic factory construction, driven by federal incentives that reward on-shoring and penalize projects with excessive exposure to "foreign entities of concern." Despite this backdrop, EnerVenue chose to build abroad, citing capital intensity and readiness of its second-generation design as key factors in its decision to abandon the Kentucky site. In 2020, EnerVenue raised a $12 million seed round, followed by a $100 million Series A in 2021 from investors including Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and Schlumberger New Energy . In 2023, the company announced a $264 million investment to open a Kentucky factory, a plan it later scrapped. The March 31 extension of a $308 million Series B now funds the Changzhou buildout. The new plant will start with a 250 megawatt-hour-per-year line and aims to scale to 1 gigawatt-hour by 2027, unlocking competitive unit economics. The batteries are engineered for 30,000 cycles with minimal degradation, can discharge three times a day for 30 years, and operate between –4 °F and 140 °F. Customers have requested configurations ranging from 2-hour to 25-hour duration, but the company emphasizes its long-life, high-frequency discharge capability over duration claims. In a press release, the company described the facility as "the world's epicenter of battery manufacturing expertise." CEO Henning Rath said, "We see ourselves still as an American company," adding that the firm "is going to become a global player." He also noted, "We have to showcase scale first, in a very capital-efficient way," explaining that China's low-cost manufacturing environment was the decisive factor for the first scale-up. Looking ahead, EnerVenue aims to demonstrate that its nickel-hydrogen chemistry can meet grid-storage demands with superior safety and longevity. If the company can prove its batteries' commercial viability, it could attract utilities seeking robust, high-frequency storage solutions in rugged or petrochemical settings, potentially reshaping the long-duration storage landscape dominated by lithium-ion systems.