Novus Capital Corp. II (NXU) Adds $50M to Energy Vault PIPE
Novus Capital Corp. II (NYSE:NXU) announced this morning that it has added $50 million to the PIPE and entered into a licensing agreement for its combination with kinetic energy storage company Energy Vault.
The new investment comes at $10 per share from Atlas Renewable, upsizing the current PIPE from $150 million to $200 million. Today’s investment follows the previously announced $50 million upsize investment from Korea Zinc back in early January.
These proceeds, combined with up to $288 million in Novus’s cash trust account, will be used to fund Energy Vault’s operations and support new and existing growth initiatives. As a result of this increased PIPE investment, the minimum cash condition for the business combination has been satisfied.
Atlas Renewable LLC joins several other investors in the PIPE, including strategic and institutional investors Adage Capital Partners LP, Pickering Energy Partners, Sailingstone Capital Energy Transition Strategy Fund, SoftBank Investment Advisers, CEMEX Ventures (NYSE: CX), Korea Zinc, and others. Affiliates and associates of Novus Capital also participated in the PIPE investment following the recent Series C funding round previously announced on August 28, 2021 which closed at $107.5 million and included strategic investments from Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, BHP Ventures, +Volta Energy Technologies and Softbank Vision Fund, among others.
Additionally, Novus II entered into a $50 million License and Royalty agreement today for renewable energy storage with Atlas Renewable as well as their majority investor China Tianying Inc., an international environmental management and waste remediation corporation. The agreement supports the deployment of Energy Vault’s proprietary gravity energy storage technology and energy management software platform within mainland China and the Special Administrative Regions (SAR) of Hong Kong and Macau.
The agreement represents the first gravity-based storage partnership between a U.S. and Chinese company for the deployment of the technology in China. The payments of the $50 million licensing fees are scheduled to be made in 2022.
Novus Capital II and Energy Vault initially announced their $1.13 billion combination on September 9. Westlake Village, California-based Energy Vault is developing a utility scale energy storage solution that uses gravity to release energy by de-stacking heavy slabs.