Sakuu Wins Fast Company’s 2025 World Changing Ideas Award for Kavian Dry Electrode Printing Process

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sakuu® (www.sakuu.com), a leading provider of commercial-scale equipment and technologies to the battery manufacturing industry, has been recognized as a winner in Fast Company’s 2025 World Changing Ideas Awards for its Kavian dry electrode printing process. The annual awards program honors bold and transformative efforts designed to make the world safer, cleaner, more sustainable, and more equitable.

“This award further validates the effectiveness of the Kavian Platform for enabling battery cell producers and OEMs to scale up production to support the growth, sustainability, and efficiency demands of the future.”

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The Sakuu Kavian® Platform is the world’s first manufacturing solution to print battery electrodes using dry process, a breakthrough innovation which addresses key industry challenges in scalability, sustainability, safety, and performance, while also reducing cost.

“It’s a great honor to have Fast Company recognize our dry electrode printing process as a World Changing Idea,” said Robert Bagheri, Sakuu founder and CEO. “This award further validates the effectiveness of our Kavian Platform for enabling battery cell producers and OEMs to scale up production to support the growth, sustainability, and efficiency demands of the future.”

A panel of Fast Company editors and reporters selected 100 outstanding projects from more than 1,500 entries. Applications were judged based on their impact, sustainability, design, creativity, scalability, and ability to improve society, with the competition highlighted in Fast Company’s Summer 2025 issue on newsstands June 17.

Kavian was specifically honored by judges for “paving the way for safer, more environmentally sustainable battery electrode printing. In comparison to wet methods … Kavian’s dry process has a lower environmental impact while achieving equivalent performance.”

“The World Changing Ideas Awards have always been about showcasing the art of the possible,” said Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan. “We’re proud to recognize the organizations and leaders that are making meaningful progress on the biggest issues of our time.”

The advantages of Kavian

The high-speed, cost-effective Kavian additive manufacturing platform elegantly integrates Sakuu’s innovative dry process manufacturing steps into an all-in-one tool to produce a complete lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery electrode using less than half of the factory footprint of conventional wet coating, drying, and calendering equipment. Enabled by the Sakuu team’s expertise in material science, Kavian’s novel process successfully dry prints cathodes and anodes of various chemistries: NCM, NCA, LFP, graphite, silicon-graphite on current collector foil. This flexibility will also enable new chemistries such as aluminum-ion and sodium-ion.

Sakuu has 113 patents (granted and applied) in material, process, and manufacturing, along with 130-plus trade secrets in critical chemistry and process intellectual property (IP). The company has successfully validated the electrochemical performance of its dry printed electrodes, showing Kavian performs equal or better than traditional manufacturing of wet coated electrodes. Benefits in sustainability, cost-savings, and efficiency include:

• 100% elimination of toxic solvents and water
• 55% reduction of CO2 emissions
• 60% smaller footprint for manufacturing floor space
• 20% reduction in capital equipment costs
• 30% savings in utility operating costs

Sakuu has already delivered hundreds of meters of high-quality dry electrodes to battery cell manufacturing and EV customers. Contact the Sakuu team to request more details on Kavian.

About Sakuu

Sakuu® is a leading provider of commercial-scale printing equipment and technologies to the battery industry. Sakuu’s dry-process platforms enable rapid innovation while reducing waste and avoiding toxins. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Sakuu’s team is transforming manufacturing to power a more sustainable future. As a result, Sakuu was crowned FII8 Innovator 2024 at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Riyadh and the Kavian Platform was named one of TIME magazine’s Best Inventions of 2024. Discover more at www.sakuu.com.