Our origin
2019+
Ushering in the era of software-defined batteries
Through more than a decade, our founding team have generated over 150 papers, patents and books, advancing our understanding of how batteries work, as well as developing ways to do things differently.
In the late 2010s, we knew that batteries could be better, and we longed for the world to experience it. But around us, too few people and organisations were investing in the long-time-horizon work to solve the root cause issues that were limiting batteries to legacy performance and cost levels. People were applying band-aids, such as extra battery system insulation to address aggressive degradation caused by lithium plating, instead of deploying health-adaptive charging control to prevent plating at the source. Too many business models relied on consulting, too - on selling existing knowledge - instead of sustainably financing long-term knowledge generation to fuel the next wave of battery advancement.
So in 2019, we created Breathe as a spin-out from Imperial College London. We developed a novel battery model architecture, PHI X2, which provides real time visibility of electrode potentials using software alone. In doing so, we overcame the issues that have long-plagued battery engineers and scientists. Where reduced order modelling and three electrode setups fell short in the real world, PHI X2 delivered.
On top of the PHI X2 battery model architecture, we built our first product, Breathe Charge, the world’s most advanced adaptive charging software. Breathe Charge is embedded firmware. It supports the transition from an old world of “fast charging” to a new world of “charging experiences” on optimised battery systems.
We won our first customers. We began the journey of climbing the technology readiness scale, of software quality, and of industrialisation of our laboratory in preparation for production programmes. We grew up and earned our scars. We deployed Breathe Charge on ever more complex real world battery systems, from smartphones to cars.
Along the way, we learned that the opportunities and challenges for our customers appear far earlier than implementation of control strategies and start of production. We also discovered much more than opportunities to improve battery performance and reduce cost. We uncovered a legacy industry value chain, creaking and cracking under the pressure of a world demanding massively increased quantities of batteries to power our daily lives. So we down-selected on the gnarliest of those challenges, raised a further $21M of capital and set to work on the next phase.
Recent history
2025+
Ushering in the era of battery design automation
The history books recount a time when taking an integrated circuit to tape-out was a roll of the existential dice for semiconductor firms. Electronic design automation software upended the risk profile and then went further again, enabling semiconductor price-to-performance levels that were previously incomprehensible.
The battery industry craves an equivalent. Cell design tools today are limited primarily to thermodynamics, with poor kinetics support, and are used as a qualitative rather than quantitative component in a heavily empirical design process.
Moreover, access to cell design knowledge is asymmetrically distributed across the battery industry, locked inside walled gardens of a small number of incumbent cell manufacturers. Democratising access to powerful design tools and knowledge is key to the next stage of battery cost reduction and enhancement. More than a few companies know what they wish their battery cell would do differently, but don’t yet know what internal parameter to adjust, in what direction, and by how much, within the constraints of what can be manufactured. So we’re bringing battery design automation to the party, starting with Breathe Design.
The next generation of cost-efficient, performant batteries will be engineered with lower risk, with more engineering agility in response to changing environments, and with a stronger supply chain. The next generation of batteries will be designed using more software tools. These software tools will tightly integrate robust equation systems, material parameters, and efficient user interfaces that reflect a step change versus the decoupled equations and parameters of decades past. These changes will make it easier than ever to turn to simulation for answers, instead of scaling capital investments and running battery cyclers for every morsel of progress.
These simulation driven workflows will enable a “left-shift”, too, whereby battery control software moves from being an add-on layer on top of already-developed cell hardware, to being co-developed synchronously with cell hardware, affording the best battery engineering teams earlier visibility of system performance, constraints and risks.
At Breathe, this is a world we’re excited to live in. So we’re building that, too, starting with Breathe Model.
All in all, we’re creating a compelling software toolchain that starts with cell design, extends to cover battery simulation, and ends with optimal control firmware to extract every last drop of capability in the field using Breathe Charge.
A timeline of innovation
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Breathe is spun out of Imperial College London by Dr Ian Campbell, Dr Yan Zhao and Professor Greg Offer
Awarded Climate-KIC support
1st place in the Energy & Environment category of the Venture Catalyst Challenge
Received Entrepreneurial Fellowship from the Faraday Institution
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First patent filed
First collaboration with leading OEM customer
Secured support from the European Union
Received funding from Innovate UK
Awarded Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship
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Speedinvest leads £1.5M seed investment in Breathe
Creative Destruction Lab, Climate Stream, for massively scalable companies
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Breathe Life deployed globally on OPPO’s Reno8 Series & Find X5 smartphones
Breathe Charge applied to VARTA's EasyBlade battery
Began construction of state-of the-art 7,500 square foot battery laboratory
Support from the Royal Academy of Engineering Shott Scale Up Accelerator
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Lowercarbon Capital leads $10M series A investment in Breathe
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Announced partnership with Volvo Cars to provide Breathe Charge for new generation fully electric cars
Volvo Cars Tech Fund invests in Breathe to position itself for an all-electric future
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Volvo Cars unveils the ES90, its latest all-electric flagship sedan with Breathe's adaptive charging software, Breathe Charge
Expanded our battery software toolchain, introducing new products that go beyond embedded software to support the entire battery development process
$21M series B with Kinnevik, with Lowercarbon Capital and Volvo Cars Tech Fund both re-investing
Securing funds
March 2019, having recently undergone an informal name change from “Infinity Charging”, a not-yet-incorporated concept called “Breathe Battery Technologies” wins the Venture Catalyst Challenge’s Energy & Environment prize at Imperial College London.
We didn’t yet have a bank account to deposit the funds, but pitching competitions and incubators were essential to us financing our way through to the company’s first revenue from sales. Later, with the company oriented in the right direction, we raised venture capital investment to accelerate technology commercialisation.
Beyond CCCV
December 2019, two of our co-founders, Dr Ian Campbell and Dr Yan Zhao at Imperial College London, discuss battery charging strategies in front of a BioLogic BCS battery cycler.
One of the principles on which we built our first product, Breathe Charge, was that constant current, constant voltage (CCCV) charging was - except for having the noble attribute of utmost simplicity - outrageously dumb.
Early technical work focused on ultra-lightweight estimation of electrode potentials using a battery model running in real time and coupled to a controller to provide dynamic current control. The approach intrinsically provided better, safer utilisation of battery materials than is possible with legacy approaches to charging strategies relying on pre-compilation of lookup tables. Kokam cells were our brand of choice for early experimental validation.
Growing up, a little
January 2021, Breathe’s first office, located at the Light Bulb, Wandsworth, London.
Having begun moving out of Imperial College London during the disruption of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we worked for some months without any office. When we could afford to hire our first team member - Dr Christian Korte, joining us from Porsche Engineering - we secured our first office to provide us space to write code and talk to customers together.
We collected three picnic tables from the local DIY store, propped the printer on its box, turned a camera to face a wall so nobody could see the mess, and started a sales call.
Black technology
October 2021, our Chief Technology Officer, Dr Yan Zhao, lays a roadmap for the development of black technology - in China, the term for cutting-edge, magical technology.
Rocking our deep-black apparel with the original Breathe logo, we contemplate the intersection of batteries, the future, and fashion.
Climbing the TRL scale
May 2022, our co-founder and Chief Scientist, Dr Greg Offer, behind the scenes of a promotional video with global Chinese smartphone brand OPPO, whose latest handsets would use Breathe Charge (under a now-discontinued product name, “Breathe Life”).
Today, more than 27 different models of OPPO smartphones worldwide are available with adaptive charging through Breathe Charge. For Breathe, demonstrating the efficacy of adaptive charging on increasingly complex battery systems was the pathway from new technology introduction to production-grade, off-the-shelf battery software.
View the Breathe x OPPO promotional video here.
Let’s talk better batteries
We’re always interested in hearing about your batteries.
Please submit your contact details and we’ll be in touch.