In this session of IONS, Cam is joined by Dr. Adrian Yao, founder of Lithium-ion cell development company EnPower and STEER, Stanford&#x27;s center for energy feasibility research. Cam and Adrian have both been in the battery space for years, and their experience across chemistries, academia, and industry informs a conversation that ranges from material development to project economics and the approach needed to commercialize batteries in the west: technological pragmatism. For the first time, Cam and Adrian discuss STEER&#x27;s 2025 study of sodium-ion cell cost-down curves and break down STEER&#x27;s initial pessimism on sodium-ion cell economics against the movement of CATL, Peak, and GM into project deployments built on an underdog chemistry. Cam and Adrian find that the industry&#x27;s perspective has expanded, growing from a granular focus on low-cost materials and R&amp;D to real assessments of system-level viability. Cam and Adrian describe this as a &quot;parallel journey&quot; tracked over the last two years by academia and industry, driven by real-world concerns as energy storage projects take the grid by storm. 🔋 Learn more about EnPower&#x27;s American-built batteries 📃 Read Dr. Yao’s thesis on energy storage development Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/peakenergytech

Technological Pragmatism - A Conversation with Adrian Yao of EnPower & STEER

IONS by Peak Energy

Hello everybody, I'm Cam Dales, co-founder and president of Peak Energy. Welcome to IONS and with me today I'm very excited for this conversation. An old friend of mine, his name is Adrian Yao, has had a storied career actually in the battery space both on the academic side and the industrial side. He's one of the founders of a lithium ion battery company called EnPower here in the US.

He is the founder of an organization that I hope to talk a little bit about called STEER, S-T-E-E-R at Stanford. And then for some unknown reason decided to jump back into the startup world, rejoin his battery startup EnPower as the CEO. And so is I'm sure having lots of fun with that.

So we'll dig into that over the next few minutes or hours depending on how this goes. But Adrian, welcome to IONS. Thank you. Happy to be here. Yeah, maybe a couple of words of background kind of your history. Take us through how you got your start in the battery space and then would love to talk a little bit maybe in the beginning here about your time at Stanford.

Yeah. Well, I think, again, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I think like most people in the battery space, I think the start is by accident. If we actually knew how hard it was, none of us would have done it. We would run for the hills. Exactly. How hard could it be? It's a plus and a minus. Exactly. That's how I ended up in the industry. Yeah. So I founded the company 12 years ago, coming out of undergrad from Rice University. Yeah. Certainly didn't know what the hell we were doing. Right.

Technological Pragmatism - A Conversation with Adrian Yao of EnPower & STEER

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Technological Pragmatism - A Conversation with Adrian Yao of EnPower & STEER

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.