Episode Details

What if the next major battery breakthrough does not require a new chemistry, a new factory, or an entirely new manufacturing ecosystem?

In this episode of Green Giants: Titans of Renewable Energy, Wes Ashworth sits down with David Mackanic, Co-Founder and CEO of Anthro Energy, to explore why the electrolyte may be one of the most overlooked levers in battery performance. 

Anthro Energy is developing Proteus, a phase-change electrolyte designed to enter a battery cell as a liquid and then solidify during formation. The goal is to improve safety, mechanical stability, swelling behavior, and compatibility with higher-energy chemistries while using existing lithium-ion manufacturing equipment. 

David explains why this approach could matter for everything from silicon-rich batteries and consumer electronics to EVs, robotics, defense, autonomous systems, and physical AI.

The conversation also gets into one of the biggest challenges in battery innovation: making something work not just in a laboratory, but consistently, economically, and at industrial scale.

Wes and David discuss:

• Why the electrolyte has historically received less attention than the anode and cathode
• How Proteus transitions from liquid to solid inside the battery cell
• Why "drop-in" manufacturing does not mean zero process changes
• How mechanical stabilization can help address silicon expansion, cracking, swelling, and degradation
• Why better batteries require progress across energy density, safety, cycle life, and manufacturability at the same time
• How Anthro thinks about reducing both the frequency and severity of battery safety events
• Why a more expensive electrolyte can still create greater value at the full cell and application level
• Why robotics, autonomous systems, defense, and physical AI create a different battery problem than conventional EVs
• How structural batteries could eventually change the architecture of products themselves
• How Anthro Atlas uses AI to explore enormous electrolyte design spaces and accelerate materials development
• Where AI predictions still have to prove themselves against real-world chemistry and manufacturing
• What changes when a materials science company moves from discovery into production
• Why Anthro is scaling advanced electrolyte manufacturing in the United States
• Why the future of batteries is unlikely to be defined by one winning chemistry

David’s background spans mechanical engineering, chemistry, polymer science, and advanced battery research, including a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford focused on polymer systems for safer, longer-lasting, higher-energy lithium-ion batteries. 

This episode is a deep look at the intersection of battery technology, advanced materials, AI-driven discovery, U.S. manufacturing, energy storage, robotics, and the future of electrification.

Links:
David Mackanic on LinkedIn
Anthro Energy's Website

Wes Ashworth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weslgs/

• Email: wes@leegroupsearch.com
• https://leegroupsearch.com/green-giants-podcast/
• https://leegroupsearch.com/