BSL Battery Industrial announced the closing of its first round of funding at USD21 million to expand its cloud platform for artificial intelligence (AI) based energy management for batteries.

The lithium-ion forklift battery maker says the cash injection will be used to fund new product technology innovation, to product UL2580 certification and to increase headcount.

"Completing this financing with the help of existing investors and new financing partners is a great proof that we are on the right track,” says BSLBatt chief executive officer Eric Yi.

“With the new capital, we will have a balance sheet that will help us drive growth for existing customers through improved product performance and more UL2580 certifications, which will change the landscape of material handling in the warehousing and distribution sectors."

The research and development projects currently underway have not been disclosed. The company, which currently has a total of 288 employees, plans to more than double the number of positions in engineering, automation, software, production and sales in the next 12 to 18 months.

BSLBatt chief marketing officer Haley Ning says in the long term the company could diversify to include lithium-ion batteries in other areas.

For now, the biggest demand is in the materials handling sectors in Europe and North America.

“There are more than 10 million forklifts in the world, and about 70% of them are in North America and Europe,” he says. “So it’s a very large market, and we’re just starting to get involved in both markets.”

With lithium traceability becoming more stringent around the world, the company also plans to incorporate traceability of lithium from raw mines to battery cells into its software platform, a standard that Ning says is already in place in Europe.