Next-gen battery materials company Group14 Technologies last week furloughed an undisclosed number of employees at its yet-to-be-finished facility in Moses Lake, Wash., as neighboring rival Sila expects to start production for customers this spring.
“We are still moving forward but at a measured pace,” CEO Rick Luebbe said via email. He hopes the furloughs are for “a relatively brief amount of time. There is just not enough work for them until we complete the construction.”
Both companies have developed silicon-carbon materials that replace traditionally used graphite in the anodes of lithium-ion batteries, delivering better performance and significantly higher energy capacity.
The battery sector faced a challenging year in 2025, weathering federal cuts to clean tech support, ongoing tariff uncertainties, and a slowing electric vehicle market. But battery demand is growing — driven in part by grid-scale energy storage for data centers and other electricity infrastructure — making advanced battery materials increasingly valuable.
While Group14 has scaled back its Pacific Northwest operations, the company has ramped up activity in South Korea, recently acquiring full ownership of a battery materials factory it previously co-owned with SK Inc., an investment holding firm. In August, Group14 landed $463 million from investors in a round led by SK.
The South Korean factory is now producing commercial-scale volumes of Group14’s silicon anode material for customer performance testing.
In Washington state, Group14 laid off an undisclosed number of workers in July and is delaying the completion of its Moses Lake facility, which broke ground in 2023 and is about 90% built. Construction could finish this year, Luebbe told GeekWire in a recent interview.
“We kind of slowed down our scale up in Washington to lean in completely on our acquisition, getting full control of the joint venture,” Luebbe said. “That’s going great. We’ve had a big team from Moses Lake that has been in Korea for the last nine months.”
Sila commits to Moses Lake
Sila, a California-based silicon anode competitor, is moving ahead with manufacturing at its Moses Lake site.
The company is currently commissioning its plant and will begin producing material for automotive customers beginning in March, said Chris Dougher, Sila’s vice president of operations, at this month’s Future of Carbon Policy Forum in Seattle.
More than 300 workers were hired to build the factory, and the facility will employ about 100 full-time workers for manufacturing roles.
Dougher said that Sila is committed both to delivering next-gen battery technology and to doing that in Washington, “showing that you could take innovation from lab to manufacturing scale in America.”
Power constraints loom
But challenges loom in the Pacific Northwest. Washington’s increasingly limited electricity supplies could potentially impede the expansion of Sila and Group14 — curtailing their abilities to help solve the energy shortage — and raising questions about the region’s opportunity to capitalize on its clean tech investments.
“We’re competing for the power with data centers,” Luebbe said. “The power is a constraint which nobody expected. And so Washington is a tougher place to deploy infrastructure.”
Dougher agreed, noting there should be enough electricity available for Sila’s next phase of expansion, but potentially not beyond that.
“We need to find ways to break down that red tape,” he said, “and make power more accessible and on a more timely scale.”
Read all of GeekWire’s coverage of Group14 and Sila.
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