Hi Anzu Partners Community,

We want to share two back-to-back significant milestones for Niron Magnetics, the company commercializing the world's first rare-earth-free permanent magnets, announcements that, taken together, mark one of the strongest funding stretches we have seen from a portfolio company this year.

On August 7, Niron received a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) for a direct loan of up to $150 million, with a 20-year term, to support construction and equipment at the company's advanced manufacturing plant in Sartell, Minnesota. The commitment was announced by President Trump at the American Mining Industry gathering in Washington, D.C. and reflects the federal government's growing focus on securing a domestic supply chain for high-performance permanent magnets, components that are increasingly critical to AI infrastructure, defense, automotive, and industrial automation. The Sartell plant is expected to be operational in 2027 and to create up to 175 full-time jobs; it will be the first commercial-scale production line on Niron's manufacturing platform, with expansion planning already underway.

Just eleven days later, on August 18, Niron announced a separate $150 million loan from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) to further advance construction of the Sartell plant. The two loans are distinct: the federal financing still requires completion of due diligence, and a minimum equity raise before definitive documents are executed. But the SMSC commitment is notable in its own right. SMSC's relationship with Niron goes back more than a decade, to an introduction through the University of Minnesota's Research and Innovation Office, and the tribe has been a financial backer of the company multiple times. SMSC leaders joined Niron's team at the Sartell groundbreaking, where Chairman Cole Miller spoke to the project's impact on Minnesota manufacturing.

Together, the two commitments total up to $300 million in support for a single facility, a strong signal of confidence in Niron's technology from both the federal government and a longtime community partner, and a meaningful step toward standing up a fully domestic, rare-earth-free magnet supply chain. With the Sartell plant on track for 2027 and two major financing milestones now behind them, Niron is entering the final stretch of the year with real momentum, and we are looking forward to watching that progress continue.

Sincerely,

David Michael and David Seldin, Managing Partners, Anzu Partners

PORTFOLIO COMPANY UPDATES

6K Energy Advances Domestic Battery Materials Supply Chain with Manganese Offtake and Valgotech MOU

6K Energy advanced its domestic battery materials supply chain on two fronts in August. On August 17, Euro Manganese entered into a non-binding offtake term sheet with 6K Energy for the proposed sale of high-purity electrolytic manganese metal (HPEMM) from Euro Manganese's Chvaletice Manganese Project in the Czech Republic, following 6K Energy's successful testing and preliminary qualification of material produced at the project's Demonstration Plant. The term sheet contemplates a long-term, take-or-pay offtake arrangement, with pricing intended to support the project's debt-financing requirements; initial volumes are expected to begin supply in 2028, advancing Chvaletice's position as a secure, traceable Western source of high-purity manganese for North American battery supply chains.

A week later, on August 24, Valgotech, a U.S. developer of advanced battery systems for defense and commercial applications, announced a new hybrid battery pack architecture designed to optimize the high energy-density advantages of lithium-metal chemistry, alongside a new memorandum of understanding with 6K Energy for domestic NMC supply.

NTx Bio Powers Baylor College of Medicine's Manufacturing of a Personalized Cancer Vaccine in Diakonos Oncology's Phase 1 Refractory Melanoma Trial

NTx Bio announced that its NTxscribe® CORE platform is being used by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine to manufacture mRNA for Diakonos Oncology's DOC1021 (dubodencel), a personalized double-loaded dendritic cell vaccine now dosing patients in an industry-sponsored Phase 1 trial for refractory melanoma — one of the first publicly disclosed clinical translations of NTx's continuous-flow manufacturing platform.

At Baylor, researchers use NTxscribe to amplify tumor mRNA derived from very small surgical biopsies, a foundational step in the vaccine platform. The mRNA produced faithfully maintains the full-length range of each patient's tumor transcriptome, preserving the integrity of longer sequences so the material reflects a full representation of tumor antigens.

BioPharm International and BioSpace covered the news.

AM Batteries Partners on $50 Million U.S. Department of Energy Award to Scale Domestic Battery Manufacturing with Dry Coating Technology

AM Batteries, a leader in dry battery-electrode (DBE) manufacturing technology, announced its role as a core subrecipient of a $50 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy's Manufacturing Deployment Office, under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The project, led by Coreshell Technologies, aims to build out roughly 2 gigawatt-hours of electrode manufacturing capacity and 1.5 gigawatt-hours of cell assembly capacity in the U.S., creating more than 100 domestic jobs.

AM Batteries is contributing its Powder-to-Electrode™ dry-coating process for cathode manufacturing, eliminating energy-intensive solvent-based wet coating and the associated toxic solvent-recovery infrastructure, and pairing with Coreshell's metallurgical silicon (MGS) anode technology — a graphite replacement in a supply chain currently over 93% concentrated in China.

Interesting Engineering and EV Engineering & Infrastructure covered the news.

Voltaiq Collaborates with ai& to Ensure Quality, Reliability, and Safety of Battery Energy Storage for AI Data Centers

ai& ("ai-and"), a vertically integrated frontier AI technology company, and Voltaiq, the leading Enterprise Battery AI company, announced plans to deploy battery energy storage systems (BESS) across ai&'s AI data centers in Japan, pairing ai&'s sovereign AI compute infrastructure with Voltaiq's Enterprise Battery AI platform to accelerate grid interconnection, lower power costs, and ensure safety and reliability.

The collaboration is initially focused on Japan, where data residency and grid constraints make quality-assured, locally sovereign energy infrastructure especially valuable, with both companies planning to expand the approach to additional sites, markets, and partners over time.

BioSkryb Genomics Names William E. Evans, Pharm.D. as Chief Executive Officer

BioSkryb Genomics, a pioneer in single-cell and ultra-low-input multiomic solutions, announced that William E. Evans, Pharm.D., has been appointed Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Suresh Pisharody, who has departed the company to pursue other opportunities. Dr. Evans has served on BioSkryb's Board of Directors and as Chair of its Scientific Advisory Board since 2019 and brings four decades of leadership in pediatric oncology research, pharmacogenomics, and translational research to the role, including a decade as President and CEO of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

"I'm honored to step into this role and drive our business forward into major clinical applications, AI-oriented multiomic cell atlas programs, and expansions of our customers' transformative basic biomedical research," said Dr. Evans.

Contract Pharma and BioSpace covered the news.

ANZU PARTNERS UPDATES

Upcoming Events

Anzu representatives plan to attend the following events:

• Tough Tech Summit 2026 – October 27, 2026 – Boston, MA

Please reach out to info@anzupartners.com if you’re interested in meeting with us at any of these events. 

ADDITIONAL PC MEDIA COVERAGE

• Anzu Partners was named to TIME’s** list of America’s Top Venture Capital Firms of 2026. Anzu Principal Wendy Papakostandini was also a co-author of a Nature paper featuring a survey dataset of battery industry professionals.
• XGS Energy’s record-setting geothermal lease bid was covered by Utility Dive.
• GelSight’s new Remote Assist feature was covered by Quality Digest.
• OTI Lumionics and its work with the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology on 200+ logical qubit quantum emulation was covered by Quantum Computing Report.
• ExOne was included in a 3DPrint.com roundup of recent 3D printing news.
• Xendee was featured in Kiplinger, TechTarget, and The Cool Down, covering home energy resilience, AI data center power sourcing, and California households managing peak electricity demand.
• Nirrin Technologies was featured in Drug Development & Delivery in a piece covering its High-Precision Tunable Laser Spectroscopy technology.
• MedCrypt was cited in MDDI Online’s coverage of the Boston Scientific cyberattack and in Bank Info Security’s piece on FDA regulation of GenAI medical devices.

*Requires subscription to read

**Rankings were published August 18th, 2026 and were based on data from September 2025-August 2026.

FOLLOW US

To stay up to date on the latest news from both Anzu and our portfolio companies, follow us on social media.

ABOUT ANZU PARTNERS

Anzu Partners is an investment firm that focuses on industrial and life science technology companies with the potential to transform their industries. Anzu works with entrepreneurs to develop and commercialize technological innovations by providing capital alongside deep experience in business development, market positioning, intellectual property, global connectivity, and operations. For more information, please visit https://anzupartners. com/.