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EnerVenue CEO Henning Rath has opened the US battery startup’s first manufacturing plant in Changzhou, China, after abandoning an earlier plan for a $264 million factory in Kentucky and choosing China as the company’s first base for high-volume production.
Rath, who became chief executive in March 2026, said access to China’s manufacturing ecosystem was a condition of taking the role. His argument is less about wages than the concentration of engineering, automation and supply-chain expertise around Changzhou. The new plant is about 95% automated, is expected to employ roughly 400 people by the end of the year and cost between $20 million and $50 million to build.
That comparison is central to the strategy. EnerVenue’s Kentucky project had been expected to create 450 jobs in its first phase, but the company ultimately walked away from the site. Rath has instead chosen to prove the manufacturing process in a region where specialist suppliers and engineering support are already close to the factory floor.
The decision follows a $300 million extension to EnerVenue’s Series B financing completed in March and led by Full Vision Capital. EnerVenue said the funding covers its near- and mid-term manufacturing targets. The Changzhou line is designed for 250 MWh of annual production capacity, with a path to 1 GWh in 2027 and multiple gigawatt-hours thereafter.
EnerVenue develops Aqueous Metal Cell technology based on nickel-hydrogen battery chemistry with roots in aerospace applications. Research and development remains in California, while Changzhou is becoming the industrial centre of the business. That creates a deliberate split between technology development in the US and high-volume manufacturing in China.
For Rath, the leadership challenge is therefore broader than opening one factory. He is trying to establish a manufacturing system that can later be repeated in other markets without losing the cost and speed advantages EnerVenue sees in China. The company plans to pursue manufacturing expansion in North America, Europe and the Middle East from 2028, subject to regulation and market conditions.
The management structure is also being built around that next phase. Maryann Xu, appointed chief financial officer in June, is based at the Changzhou manufacturing hub and is responsible for financial strategy, capital allocation and risk management as EnerVenue scales production. That puts finance close to the operational decisions that will determine how quickly the company can move from a 250 MWh line towards multi-gigawatt capacity.
The China-first approach brings an obvious trade-off. EnerVenue gains access to a mature battery and automation ecosystem, but future regional expansion will still depend on whether its production model can be transferred economically and whether regulation permits the company to serve key markets from Chinese manufacturing.
Rath’s decision is therefore a test of sequencing as much as location. Rather than building simultaneously across several regions, EnerVenue is using Changzhou to prove that its technology can be manufactured at scale before committing substantially more capital elsewhere. If that system proves repeatable, the China factory could become the template for a global production network. If it does not, the efficiency gained at the first plant may be difficult to reproduce outside the ecosystem that made it possible.