Forge Nano expands Voltaiq AI platform deal for US battery push

Forge Nano has expanded its partnership with enterprise battery software firm Voltaiq, deploying the latter's AI-powered Battery Intelligence platform across its US battery development and production operations. The move comes as the Colorado-based materials company accelerates its transition from advanced battery development into high-volume domestic manufacturing, with a specific focus on defence and aerospace applications.

The expanded arrangement will see Voltaiq's platform applied across Forge Nano's full product lifecycle, from early-stage R&D through to manufacturing quality control. Engineers will use the software to detect manufacturing anomalies, flag quality excursions and identify equipment issues in near-real-time, building on an existing data infrastructure the two companies have developed over several years.

Paul Lichty, chief executive and co-founder of Forge Nano, said: "Rolling out AI across the battery development business allows us to build on the proven data foundation we already have with Voltaiq and use their new AI virtual battery engineers to enable all of our teams to make better decisions and scale our business."

Gigafactory context

Forge Nano recently broke ground on a 3 GWh per year gigafactory in Morrisville, North Carolina, targeting high-performance battery applications for defence and aerospace customers, segments where performance traceability and quality assurance carry regulatory as well as commercial weight. The company has also signed an agreement to merge with Archimedes Tech SPAC Partners II (NASDAQ: ATII), a transaction that would give Forge Nano a public listing and access to capital markets as it ramps capacity.

Voltaiq's platform unifies electrochemical, materials and process data into a single environment, which the company positions as a prerequisite for reliable AI-driven insights. Tal Sholklapper, chief executive and co-founder of Voltaiq, described the data-readiness challenge directly: "AI is only as useful as the data behind it. The Voltaiq platform was built to make battery data AI-ready at scale and give engineers the context and insights they need to make decisions that improve yield, quality, and throughput."

Market and competitive landscape

Battery intelligence software is a fast-developing niche within the broader enterprise AI and industrial analytics market. As the US intensifies its domestic battery manufacturing ambitions, driven by Inflation Reduction Act incentives and defence-supply-chain priorities, software vendors that can demonstrate measurable yield and quality improvements are well positioned to grow alongside new gigafactory capacity. Voltaiq competes in a market that includes specialist battery analytics firms as well as broader manufacturing execution system providers, some of which are adding AI-layer capabilities to existing MES and quality-management platforms.

For Forge Nano, the partnership reinforces a software-forward manufacturing strategy at a critical point. The company's core Atomic Layer Deposition technology, marketed as Atomic Armor, is applied both to battery electrodes and to semiconductor components for AI-era chip manufacturing, giving it exposure to two of the most capital-intensive build-out cycles currently under way in US industry. Whether the SPAC merger closes on schedule will be closely watched by investors as the gigafactory build gathers pace; the partnership with Voltaiq signals that operational infrastructure is being put in place ahead of full-rate production.

The defence battery market, where performance and traceability standards are set by procurement bodies such as the US Department of Defense, adds a compliance dimension to the data-management work. Voltaiq's ability to maintain audit-ready data lineage across the manufacturing process may prove as commercially significant as the AI analytics layer itself.