Briefings · Graphite

DOE cancelled Anovion’s $117 million graphite award after $13.8 million had gone out the door

The anode graphite startup held a nine-figure federal grant and first position on the tariff petition against its Chinese competition. Between October 2025 and April 2026 it lost both.

Published Aug 13, 2026. Every figure below is linked to the document it comes from.

Anovion held both kinds of federal backing available to an American anode graphite company: a nine-figure grant from the Energy Department, and the first-listed seat on the petition asking for tariffs on its Chinese competition. Between October 2025 and April 2026 it lost both.

The award

Federal award DEMS0000006 went to ANOVION LLC from the Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, signed 20 July 2023 under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The USAspending award record shows $117,000,000 obligated against $299,965,027 in non-federal funding, and states the project’s objective: to construct and commission a 35,000 tons per annum synthetic graphite plant, scaling a domestic, US-owned anode supply chain.

The scale of the bet is why the award existed. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s figures, as cited in the TechCrunch report quoted below, put Chinese suppliers at 75 percent of the synthetic graphite supply chain and 97 percent of all synthetic graphite anode production. Anovion’s plant was one of a handful of federally backed projects meant to move those numbers.

The cancellation

On 20 October 2025, TechCrunch’s Tim De Chant reported that DOE had confirmed it was axing $720 million of manufacturing awards, Anovion’s among them:

Anovion was awarded $117 million to reshore a technology to produce synthetic graphite for lithium-ion batteries anodes. Chinese suppliers control 75% of the supply chain for synthetic graphite and produce 97% of all synthetic graphite anodes, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. The startup’s plant is slated to be built in Alabama and, to date, only $13.8 million has been disbursed, according to a federal database.

. . .

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been combing through contracts made during the Biden administration. The DOE claimed that the projects “missed milestones” and “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs,” spokesperson Ben Dietderich told E&E News.

The award record confirms the disbursement figure: total account outlays of $13,782,513.18, a little under 12 percent of the obligation. The stated rationale reaches this page at one remove, since TechCrunch is quoting a DOE spokesperson’s statement given to E&E News rather than a departmental release, and no primary document dating the termination has been located. The Factbook accordingly records the cancellation as reported rather than confirmed, in the instrument record DOE MESC grant to Anovion LLC, terminated October 2025. One detail is not carried at all: the report places the plant in Alabama, while Anovion’s announced plants are at Bainbridge, Georgia and Sanborn, New York, and the award’s own place of performance is the company’s Chicago corporate address.

Three cancellations, no visible pattern

The same report names the other two startups in the wave, and the numbers are worth lining up. Ascend Elements had been awarded $316 million toward a $1 billion battery-materials recycling facility in Kentucky, with $206 million already disbursed; its award was cancelled, and the company said it would proceed on other funding. LuxWall had been awarded $31.7 million for an insulating-window factory near Detroit, with $1 million sent; cancelled. Anovion sat between them at $13.8 million out the door.

Meanwhile the closest comparable graphite award survived untouched. Award DEMS0000112 to SKI US, Inc., signed 17 January 2025 under the same program, carries $150,000,000 obligated against $580,189,345 of non-federal funding for graphitization capacity at the Birla Carbon plant in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Its outlays stand at $0 and the record shows no termination indicator.

Awards were cancelled with $206 million spent, $13.8 million spent, and $1 million spent, while an award with nothing spent was kept. Whatever separated the cancelled projects from the surviving ones, it is not visible in the disbursement figures, and none of the award records states a reason.

Five months later, the tariff case

Anovion’s other federal support was procedural rather than financial. It is the first-listed member of the American Active Anode Material Producers, the ad hoc association whose December 2024 petition sought antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese anode graphite (89 FR 105100). On 3 April 2026, five and a half months after the award cancellation, the International Trade Commission’s final negative determination ended that case with no duty orders. How the case cleared every step but the last one is the subject of a separate briefing.

What is left

As of 13 August 2026, anovion.com does not resolve to a company website. It redirects to a listing for the domain name on a commercial domain marketplace.

That is a fact about a domain name, not a finding about the company, and nothing here should be read as a statement on Anovion’s solvency or operations. Its corporate status is an open question on the Factbook’s verification list. But the arc it closes is documented at every other point: a $117 million grant signed in July 2023, cancelled in October 2025 with 12 percent disbursed; a trade case joined in December 2024, lost in April 2026; and a company web address that now points at a for-sale page.