SES AI initiated with a Market Perform at William Blair

William Blair initiated coverage of SES AI with a Market Perform rating. The firm is extending its Energy and Sustainability research coverage into energy storage, specifically, lithium-ion battery, or LIB, technologies and launching coverage of a group of four companies in the advanced LIB industry, two pursuing high-content silicon and two developing Li-metal. SES is developing Li-metal batteries without a solid-state architecture and while the firm applauds SES’s achievements, it acknowledges the road to auto commercialization is long and says “Li-metal is not a drop-in replacement” as it will require new cell manufacturing equipment to be scaled.