Nine Times Longer? Nanom's EIC Accelerator Nickel-Iron Battery

The nickel-iron battery, patented by Thomas Edison in 1901, is known for robustness and long life, and for low efficiency, bulk, weight and high manufacturing cost. That is how the EU project report of the company that set out to fix it describes the technology. Greenvolt Nanoma ehf., a Reykjavik start-up now called Nanom, told the European Commission it could fix that by replacing the battery's solid iron and nickel plates with nanoparticles of the same metals. In the 19 May 2020 Green Deal cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, the Commission selected the project, Nano-Edison, for a grant without equity, according to its list of selected companies, which names Greenvolt Nanoma as the only company in the project.

The EU contribution was €1,876,218.75 towards a total cost of €2,680,312.50, for a project that ran from 1 October 2020 to 30 November 2023, according to the CORDIS fact sheet. The company promised a battery with more than 20,000 cycles at €87 per kWh, licence income from large battery makers and more than 56 new jobs. Three years after the project ended, none of those has a public record behind it.

A Company That Still Files, and Says Little

Nanom ehf. is still on Iceland's company register, with no insolvency or deregistration noted, and it has filed annual accounts for every year from 2018 to 2024, the last on 31 October 2025, according to the register of Skatturinn, the Icelandic tax authority. The accounts for 2018 to 2020 were filed under the name Greenvolt Nanoma ehf., those from 2021 under Nanom ehf. The figures inside them sit behind the register's paywall and are not published by any free source this article could open, so revenue, losses and staff since the grant cannot be checked.

The same register shows that the company's VAT registration, opened on 1 December 2018, was cancelled on 4 July 2022, 21 months into the 38-month EIC project. Its main activity code is research and experimental development in natural sciences and engineering.

The company's website was last edited in October 2025 according to its own page data. It no longer leads with batteries alone: Nanom now presents itself as a maker of "next-generation nanomaterials" for batteries, electronics and sustainable products, made with a "patented top-down accelerator technology" that it calls clean, scalable and chemical-free, and it adds the recycling of battery and industrial waste into nanomaterials. Its news section links to four items; those that carry a date are from 2021 and 2022. No product, price, customer, plant or team page is published.

The Technology: Edison's Battery, Ground Down

The company's Phase 1 summary on CORDIS pitched the nickel-iron cell for grid storage because it tolerates heavy currents, overcharging and discharging and even short circuits, and the Nano-Edison summary calls it non-flammable, acid-free and made of non-toxic metals. Its weaknesses are low efficiency, high weight and bulk, and production cost, which the company proposed to fix by using iron and nickel nanoparticles carried on carbon fibre instead of solid metal plates, according to the project report. Smaller particles mean far more active surface per gram of metal.

The company's real asset is the process for making those particles. Nanom Inc., of Palo Alto, holds two US patents naming Antonijo Licitar of Zagreb and Jon Armann Steinsson as inventors. US 11,607,693, granted on 21 March 2023, covers a mill that grinds particles down to nanoscale with counter-rotating aerodynamic vanes, augmented by ultrasound, magnetic pulses and high voltage; it continues an application filed on 22 September 2017. US 11,305,343, granted on 19 April 2022, covers "programming a crystal lattice structure" of freshly milled nanoparticles with sound, magnetic and voltage pulses. The patent index Trea lists the same two grants and one published application for Nanom Inc. How the US company relates to the Icelandic grant holder, whose register entry names one person as its 100% direct owner, is not public.

The performance claims have only ever come from the company. In April 2021 Nanom said its nanoparticles gave a nine-fold improvement in energy density, recharging and lifetime for nickel-iron batteries, and more for lithium-ion, simply by being mixed into the electrode slurry, as reported by Tech.eu and eeNews Europe. VentureBeat reported that the company had not disclosed which lithium-ion battery it compared against, and quoted claims of batteries five times lighter with materials 80% cheaper. No peer-reviewed paper, independent test or certification of these figures could be found.

The demonstration the company has pointed to is a boat. Tech.eu and VentureBeat describe a prototype electric boat whose hull was itself the battery, and VentureBeat names it Magnea and says it floated in Reykjavik harbour. The two reports quote the company saying 15 metres of such hull would store as much energy as five Tesla cars, while eeNews Europe describes the pilot as a "1m electric boat". No measured capacity or test data for the boat has been published.

What Nano-Edison Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Nano-Edison was the company's second EU grant for the same idea. In 2019 it received €50,000 from the SME Instrument Phase 1 for a four-month feasibility study, from August to November 2019, pitching the battery for grid storage and estimating it needed €3.5 million more to reach the market, according to CORDIS. The 2020 project, under the Green Deal topic of the EIC Accelerator pilot, set out four work packages: optimise the cell, redesign the battery, test and validate full-scale pre-commercial prototypes, and take the product to battery makers through licences, royalties of 0.5% on sales and nanoparticle supply at €89 per kg. Of the EU money, €1,328,709.37 went to the company and €547,509.38 to OVIA Inovacije d.o.o. of Zagreb, listed as a third party. OVIA's current status could not be verified.

The only published report covers the period from 1 October 2021 to 30 November 2023, the end of the project. It describes carbon fibre current collectors with "promising results" for both electrodes, a modular single-cell design made with 3D printing, and a purpose-built battery management system that balances cell voltages. But under results it still lists testing and validation, the multi-cell prototype, the full-scale pre-commercial prototypes and the prototype tests as work to be done, and it refers to the 2021 equity round as raised "early this year" and to an Amazon interview "scheduled for late October". The text reads as if written in 2021 and was not updated for the final period. No deliverable reporting the test results is listed.

1. Optimised nanoparticle electrodes (WP1)PartlyCarbon fibre electrodes with "promising results" per the CORDIS report; no figures published.
2. Modular battery design and BMS (WP2)Reported3D-printed single-cell module and battery management system described in the report.
3. Full-scale pre-commercial prototypes tested (WP3)Not achievedStill listed as future work at the project's end; no test result announced since.
4. Licences and nanoparticle sales to battery makersNot achievedNo partner or licensee announced; partners promised "in a few months" in April 2021.
5. More than 56 new jobsNot achievedVentureBeat reported 17 staff in 2021; no later headcount is public.
6. Protect the process with patentsDeliveredUS patents granted in April 2022 and March 2023, held by Nanom Inc.

What Happened After the Grant

The company's public life is concentrated in a few months of 2021 and 2022. In April 2021 it came out of stealth as Nanom with $3 million in seed funding, which Tech.eu says came from EU Green Deal funding, Iceland Venture Studio and Village Global, so the figure appears to include the EIC grant rather than sit on top of it. VentureBeat added the law firm Perkins Coie as a backer and reported 17 employees in Palo Alto and Reykjavik, and quoted the company saying it would announce partners in a few months. None has been announced.

In September 2022 Amazon Web Services featured the company in the Iceland episode of its series Now Go Build with Werner Vogels, and an accompanying Amazon article quotes Kojic on working within customers' existing processes; it names no customer. Searches of English and Icelandic news found no funding round, partnership, product launch, layoff or shutdown notice after that. The company is not among the 319 organisations on the EIC Fund portfolio list, which fits a grant-only award.

Why Europe Should Care

A battery built from iron and nickel, with no lithium, cobalt or flammable electrolyte, fits two EU priorities. The Batteries Regulation, in force since 17 August 2023, sets sustainability, safety and due diligence rules for every battery sold in the EU, including industrial batteries. The Critical Raw Materials Act sets a 2030 benchmark that no single third country should supply more than 65% of EU consumption of a strategic raw material, and the Commission expects EU lithium demand to rise twelve-fold by 2030. Stationary storage that does not compete with electric cars for lithium would ease that pressure.

The Verdict

Nanom has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.