Ten-Nine Technologies is scaling production of its patented cathode additive Tenix, which it describes as “anti-aging for batteries”, as the battery industry’s shift toward manganese-rich chemistries accelerates.
As batteries charge and discharge, chemical by-products accumulate within the cells, contributing to degradation over time. Tenix is an additive designed to slow this ageing process by being incorporated directly into the cathode material during manufacturing, at a concentration of 0.5%-2% by weight – equivalent to around 0.5kg–2kg per 100kg of cathode material.
Tenix can be incorporated into existing cathode production lines. Ten-Nine said that at the current production capacity of 100 tons, it can supply enough Tenix to treat between 50,000 and 200,000 typical EV battery packs.
In third-party testing, Tenix delivered over 75% more charge-discharge cycles, extending a typical EV battery’s life from a 150,000-mile warranty baseline to more than 265,000 miles. That longer life translates into roughly 40% lower cost per kilowatt-hour delivered over a battery’s lifetime, while 10% lower internal resistance means faster charging and less energy wasted as heat.
Tenix can also cut a battery’s heat output by around 40% over its lifetime – a benefit that is becoming increasingly critical as AI-driven data centers push backup batteries harder than ever.
This momentum comes as the battery industry is increasingly shifting toward manganese-rich cathodes – a cheaper, more abundant and more geographically secure alternative to the cobalt- and nickel-heavy chemistries that dominate EV batteries today.
Manganese-rich cathodes also offer a more secure supply chain than the nickel- and cobalt-heavy chemistries they could replace. Manganese is mined widely across Africa, South America and Southeast Asia.
Paige Johnson, founder and CEO of Ten-Nine Technologies, said, “Just like people, batteries age. Products of chemical decomposition build up during use, limiting a battery’s performance and lifetime, and until now that’s just been treated as an unavoidable cost of doing business. I’m a chemist so I wanted to fix that at the source rather than build a whole new battery to work around it. Tenix has a unique surface chemistry that disrupts that aging process, giving batteries more power and significantly longer life.”
Ten-Nine is currently in evaluation trials with battery manufacturers that together represent more than half of the world’s battery production volume.
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