Northvolt was founded in 2016 by former Tesla executives Peter Carlsson and Paolo Cerruti with a clear mission: build Europe’s first homegrown gigafactory for lithium-ion batteries. Headquartered in Stockholm, the company set out to reduce the continent’s dependence on Asian battery suppliers and establish a sustainable supply chain from the ground up.
The company’s first gigafactory, Northvolt Ett, is located in Skellefteå in northern Sweden, where abundant hydroelectric power keeps the carbon footprint of production remarkably low. At full capacity, the facility targets 60 GWh of annual cell production. Northvolt also built Northvolt Labs in Västerås, a pilot production line and R&D center focused on developing next-generation cell chemistries and recycling processes. The company’s Revolt recycling program recovers metals from end-of-life batteries and production scrap, feeding materials back into new cells.
Major customers include BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo, and Scania, and order books swelled past $55 billion at their peak. The company raised over $9 billion in debt and equity financing. However, 2024 brought serious financial headwinds — production ramp-ups at Northvolt Ett ran behind schedule, costs escalated, and the company filed for Chapter 11 restructuring in late 2024. Despite the setback, the underlying technology and European demand for domestic battery production remain strong. Northvolt employs several thousand workers and the restructuring aims to stabilize operations for a leaner restart.
