Boston-Power raised $45 million from four investors.
Westborough start-up Boston-Power yesterday raised $45 million in venture funding and disclosed a new partnership that will allow the company to make up to a million of its lithium-ion laptop batteries a month.
With the worldwide market for power-hungry laptops projected to outpace demand for desktops by 2009 by analyst firm IDC, the company sees a big market opportunity for its laptop batteries, which have a longer life cycle than today's batteries, lasting "like-new" for three years rather than fading after six months.
"Whether we like it or not, portable electronics are coming into our daily life . . . and the battery is really the number one complaint in all those markets" because they don't last long enough or recharge quickly enough, said Christina Lampe-Onnerud, chief executive of Boston-Power.
The firm, which has 40 employees in Massachusetts, will hire more people this year. It also disclosed a part nership with GP Batteries, a consumer battery maker, that will allow the company to triple its battery production at its plant in Taiwan.
Eventually, Lampe-Onnerud says, the company plans to expand beyond laptop batteries, potentially integrating its more efficient battery engineering into other devices, from cellphones to cars.
Though the batteries might be better than existing ones, IDC analyst Richard Shim said the company may face some barriers as it tries to sell its product.
"I think the question is, how do you generate demand or awareness of these features?" Shim said.
Boston-Power has been working closely with Hewlett-Packard since 2005, but has not yet said that its Sonata laptop battery has been incorporated into specific laptop models.
According to IDC, global demand for laptop computers is growing rapidly, and will outpace that for their deskbound counterparts by 2009. In 2007, 110 million laptops shipped; by 2009, the firm projects 165 million will be shipped.
Battery technology has also been thrust into the spotlight recently with high-profile recalls of laptop batteries. Boston-Power stresses that its batteries are safer because of novel engineering and chemistry.
"Both because of growth [of demand] and because existing suppliers have had some manufacturing issues, there is an instant substantial market opportunity," said Tony Evnin, a general partner at Venrock Associates, a firm that participated in the funding round that was led by Oak Investment Partners.
While lithium-ion batteries are common in portable electronics, manufacturers have been looking for different ways to keep gadgets juiced, including fuel cells, zinc batteries, and even solar panels.
"The battery market moves at a glacial pace, and part of the reason for that is there hasn't been a lot of innovation or investment because there's not a lot of attention placed," Shim said. "It's so underappreciated, but highly valuable."
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.
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