Bateria Donut Lab: per què Ziroth qüestiona el miracle

We are announcing a new battery that reshapes the economics and the experience of electric mobility forever. It's solid state >> [music] >> and it's going to transform the industry. >> At the Consumer Electronics Show 2026, a company called Donut Lab announced a battery they claimed would change the industry forever. However, after months of investigation and interviews, I found overwhelming evidence that it is far from what they promised [music] in a story that goes much deeper than I ever thought. The CEO of Chinese battery giant Svolt has publicly called the battery a scam. [music] Lawyers have recommended I don't explicitly call this a scam, so this video is merely providing evidence to support [music] the already public accusations. There's a web of companies behind the battery and in this video we're going to untangle all of it. What started as an eccentric German inventor selling his ideas to >> [music] >> anyone that would listen evolved into a company valued at over a billion dollars making provably false claims about their technology to extract money from small investors and government grants. Grab the popcorn because this is going to be a good one. As always, I respect your time, so let's get straight into the investigation. I'm Ryan Innis and this is a Zero Stage dive. The headline figures from Donut Labs that caught the world's attention were that their battery could last 100,000 cycles, have 400 watt hours per kilogram energy density, have a 5-minute fast charge, and all at lower costs with no critical materials such as lithium. All of these stats would apparently be in the same battery cell. And to put that into context, it would give current electric vehicles about double their range. The batteries would last hundreds of years and make them cheap enough that everyone would go electric without a second thought. All without any imported minerals. As regular viewers will know, I'm a nerd for technical details. But to understand this story, we first need to look at the people and companies behind the scenes, as they'll be referred to throughout the video. We'll then look into the promised technology, what was actually delivered and tested, and the lies and financial misconduct that went on behind the scenes, which is all kinds of messed up. The first company on our diagram is, of course, Donut Lab, which is a spin-out of the motorcycle company Verge Motorcycles, a real company making real electric motorbikes. However, in the build-up to all of this, Verge was going through a tough time financially. In fact, an audit from the firm PwC was unable to even complete it because nearly all financial information regarding inventory, sales receipts, research expenditure, and assets were missing. Donut Lab also has a public partnership with another Finnish company called Nordic Nano. In this partnership, you can think of Nordic Nano as the cell manufacturers and Donut Lab as the marketing and commercialization company who specialize in getting the cells into products. However, both companies are very young, founded in just 2024. So, things get interesting when we see where the invention of the so-called solid-state miracle battery actually came from. The invention of the

solid-state battery takes us to a company called CT Coatings, a German company with an eclectic array of patents within the broad theme of screen printing and energy. This includes inventions such as screen printed solar panels, heating elements, super capacitors, and of course, solid-state batteries. I've read a lot of patents in my time, and these patents are unspecific and overreaching, to put it kindly, but we'll get back to those in a bit. Although the link between CT Coatings, Nordic Nano, and Donut Lab hasn't been mentioned publicly, I obtained a lot of information tying them all together. This includes a leaked NDA with all of the companies' names, leaked emails from an undisclosed insider to the Finnish media, and a few chats with ex-chief commercial officer and co-founder of Nordic Nano, Lauri Patola, who recently shared a drink with me in a lovely London pub. >> The The system goes like this, that the German company, CT Coating, is the one providing the the printing technology. So, they are they are the technology provider here. And the role of Nordic Nano is to to be the the producing partner, and then Donut Lab will be the the commercializing partner in this. >> Across the three companies, the roles are roughly split such that CT Coating was the innovator, Nordic Nano the manufacturer, and Donut Lab would commercialize the cell. >> [music] >> However, as we'll see later, Nordic Nano has never even manufactured a single battery cell. Now, these are the main companies involved, but there are many others hanging around, too, with various levels of engagement. A notable mention goes to Saft Energy, a Spanish spin-off from CT Coatings that claimed to have a battery with some very familiar specifications before Donut Lab announced their cell at CES. Many web pages from Saft Energy have since been deleted, seemingly in attempt to hide the evidence. There is also the company Holy Volt, who had a partnership with CT Coatings over a period of approximately 6 months. However, from a call I had with their CEO, Mattias Ingvarsson, he wanted to make it very clear that they no longer have any connection with CT Coatings, and there is absolutely no link between Holy Volt and Donut Lab. The feeling I got from the chat that I had with Mattias was almost defensive and really wanted to show that they had nothing to do with CT Coatings, which made sense as I learned more about CT Coatings business. Perhaps Holy Volt was drawn in by the miraculous claims made by CT Coatings, but is now looking to grow a more legitimate company focused on battery materials >> [music] >> fueled by their recent acquisition of the company Wildcat, which has a very real and talented team of scientists and engineers. You'll likely see the names of other companies on documents if you look into this topic, but for now, we'll just focus on CT Coatings, Nordic Nano, and Donut Lab with a little bit from their parent company, Verge Motorcycles. Chapter two, the origins of CT Coatings. Throughout the coverage of the Donut Lab battery, CT Coatings has hidden in the shadows, protected by aggressive NDAs

that block anyone from speaking out. However, they have a much larger part to play in all of this than they might have you believe. The formation of the company is a little messy with a number of companies coming before it such as Clevertech Consultants Limited, but it was officially founded in 2017. Most, if not all of the patents from CT Coatings, trace back to one man, Ernst Hollzenbein. Ernst is a German inventor with an eclectic past, but I'm still not exactly sure what he really developed and what was just ideas, but there are videos going back to 2017 on YouTube of his screen printed technology apparently being used for heating, lighting, and energy storage. His patents, which are assigned to CT Coating, have some interesting ideas including a folder for a menu and or drinks list with a flat lighting module, a warning triangle, a method of manufacturing a shelf for displaying goods, a cover unit for a solar module, and a method for producing a paving slab. You may be thinking what on earth do any of these have to do with the donut lab battery? Well, let's just say it's not just a normal paving slab. It's worth noting here that I spoke to many people within the battery industry during this investigation and their interactions with Ernst Hollzenbein and CT Coatings were not overly positive. Dr. Joachim Sann, who is a lecturer from a university just over an hour away from where CT Coatings is based, told me that he knew people who had had investor meetings with Ernst and each time they would be given wild claims about what his screen printing nano paste could do with little or no reliable evidence. Laurie from Nordic Nano also had some interesting interactions with him. >> I met Mr. Earl Haltonbauer a few times in person and then then of course having a few few meets on Teams. Quite an interesting guy. He's like he's like a this traditional stereotype of an uh uh innovator investor who has like this million ideas. So, he's a he's a very eccentric interesting guy. >> I also called with Julian Zanao from the Fraunhofer Research Institution in Germany, who are probably the world leaders of things in energy. He met with a representative from CT Coating and was not impressed at all either. >> The first impression I got there was that these people have no idea what how a battery actually works. They were talking about no rare earth metals in their batteries and therefore no lithium. And to any chemist lithium has nothing to do with rare earth minerals. They talked about bipolar cell design. Um what they actually meant was the ability to charge and discharge. So, that they could switch the poles in the battery, but that's in any battery, right? So, there was a lot of a lot of buzzwords going around, but no real um no real science behind it. They gave us very little information. Uh they tried to be as vague as possible uh while still stirring up curiosity. >> All of this is to highlight that the origins of the Donut Lab battery, which

trace back to CT Coatings, raise some serious red flags due to CT Coatings' clear lack of technical expertise. But, it also gives us clues as to what the promised battery technology really was. Because remember, that paving slab patent hides some interesting secrets. Chapter 3 The promised battery technology. Something I've learned during this investigation is that the battery technology CT Coatings promised to deliver, which caused Nordic Nano and then Donut Labs to partner with them, and the battery they actually provided for the test series published by Donut Lab are two very different things altogether. If we look inside the paving slab patent, we'll find it describes one of the most over-engineered paving slabs I've ever seen. Not only does this paving slab have a solar panel, heating element, and OLED display, which makes normal slabs look pretty lame, it also has a battery in it. Specifically, a high-temperature-resistant, screen-printed, solid-state, sodium-ion battery. This appears to fundamentally be what Nordic Nano and Donut Lab thought they were getting from CT Coatings. But, I did a little bit of extra digging, too, to get more evidence on this and find out more. Nordic Nano had a job advert out in the past, which mentioned a salt battery, which links to the sodium-ion chemistry, and referenced screen printing in a previous presentation. >> The technology that that is supposed to be used is uh screen-printed technology. Yeah. >> Now, without crossing into speculation, we can't really know more about battery technology than this. However, there was an interesting theory by Dr. Yoachim Sand, who I also referenced earlier. He mentioned a new type of cell that uses a quinone compound in the cathode. It's an emerging chemistry that allows high energy densities while still using sodium ions. This is real science, but it's decades and decades away from commercialization. and Dr. Joachim Sann, who proposed this theory in the first place and works in a lab with people actually working on quinone batteries, shut down the theory as soon as he saw the first test results from Donut Lab in their series I Donut Believe. It's worth saying again that this is purely about what CT Coatings promised to Nordic Nano, Donut Labs, and even Holy Volt to get them to commit to a partnership. Because, as we will see, the cell Donut Lab is testing is definitely not a solid-state screen-printed sodium-ion battery. Chapter 4, the real battery technology. Nordic Nano and Donut Lab were promised the world with the miracle battery. >> [music] >> It seemed to have no trade-offs. It stored huge amounts of energy, could charge fast, didn't contain any critical materials, and lasted for generations. Buying into this in the first place was a mistake, but the continued errors during testing demonstrate a severe lack of expertise, which all started when the company failed to get any sufficient technical due diligence on the battery. >> The the actual technical expertise, [music] especially related to kind of a deep dive to battery technology, so it was really thin. Because neither of the companies has, or at least had when I was still working at Nordic Nano, had like [music] technical experts that would have had

deep understanding [music] on batteries and battery chemistry and manufacturing of batteries. So, I I was relying on the information that I was receiving from Donut Lab, as was everybody in on the Nordic Nano side. Because before the the CES launch, Nordic uh Donut Lab had told us that they had internally done thorough enough uh technical due diligence that they they can bravely go to CES. So, basically, what Donut Lab was telling us and what they were also telling the investors was that they did the technological due [music] diligence by themselves. >> Well, with Donut Lab being in control of most of the technical due diligence, it appears that they were either grossly ill-equipped to test the cell, despite having tens of millions in funding, or they were deliberately misleading investors. Because what they had was no miracle battery. So, I've worked with automotive battery cells for about 6 years now, but I wanted to get as many experts as possible that were impartial to the situation to help me inform my conclusions. I've spoken to over 20 independent battery experts about the test data Donut Lab has released as part of their series trying to prove that the battery is real. Without failure, every single one of them confirms that this is a lithium-ion battery cell for reasons we'll now explore. Many of these asked to stay anonymous, but Julian Zanol from the Fraunhofer Research Institute, Tom Botticher, CEO of Lithona, Dr. Juho Heska from the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, and Dr. Joachim Sann from the Justus Liebig University all shared their conclusions publicly. With every single one of them confirming that this is a lithium-ion battery cell. I can only apologize for my pronunciations of those. That is not friendly for a dyslexic mind. I won't beat a dead horse here by going through all of the technical data too much, but there are two huge giveaways that the experts told me about. The first is that the voltage curves are a close match to high nickel lithium-ion cells. >> And my initial thought was this is an this is NCM chemistry. Like 100%. I mean, voltage curves are not a fingerprint directly, [music] but close. >> The data here is a little noisy, and there are high voltage sodium-ion cells. But, I have never seen a sodium-ion cell significantly pass 3.5 V >> [music] >> at 50% state of charge. Especially not up to 3.7 or 3.8 V, which is where high voltage lithium cells sit, and the Donut Lab cells, too. This was enough evidence for basically all the battery experts I spoke to. But, I understand that it can still leave some uncertainty in many people. So, here's a final bit of evidence that is a real nail into the coffin. A recent test showed how the cell expanded and contracted during charging and discharging. This happens as ions, such as sodium or lithium, squeeze into the anode material and ever so slightly force the layers apart. Graphite is a common anode material, and it expands in a predictable way as the ions squeeze into it during the charge process. Another common material is hard

carbon, which has a different structure to graphite and therefore expands in a different, yet also largely predictable, way. First, let's look at how a battery using hard carbon in the anode expands when it's charged. You'll notice that the curve goes up sharply at around 20% state of charge, and then slowly flattens out as the battery approaches a full charge. The percentage that the cell expands depends on whether it has lithium or sodium ions, the cell geometry, or depending on how much a pressure is applied to the cell. But for any given anode material, the general shape of the expansion curve is the same, and that shape is what we'll focus on here. Now, if we instead look at how a battery using a graphite anode expands whilst it's charged, you'll notice it expands sharply at the start, then it has a distinctive kink in the graph, which happens around 50 to 70% state of charge, where the cell expands slower for a short period of time before speeding up again. This kink in the second half of the charging phase is due to a very well-understood part of electrochemistry, and relates to how the ions reorder themselves at this stage of the charging process. If we now bring in the expansion graph of the Donut Lab cell tested by VTT for comparison, which was only charged to 85% for some reason, we can see the distinctive kink around the 50 to 70% state of charge mark. Meaning, the tested cell uses a graphite anode. This is highly significant because sodium ions are too big to naturally fit into layers of graphite. And [music] because we can see the anode is graphite, the cell from CT Coatings that Donut Lab tested must be lithium-ion. This is damning for Donut Lab, but it's really cool science. In a previous video, I mentioned the voltage curve is like an electrochemical fingerprint, but due to the noise in the Donut Lab data, finding an exact chemistry match always led to questions of uncertainty. Well, now it's like we have a slightly noisy fingerprint [music] and a picture of the suspect's face. And yet again, it's a match with our old friend lithium. Oh, yeah. And if you're wondering how energy dense the Donut Lab cell really is, because apparently no one at Donut Lab has any scales, a verified third-party test report measured one of CT Coatings previous cells and showed it to be 297 watt-hours per kilogram. Although this is clearly a different cell than what was tested by VTT for Donut Lab, I imagine the chemistry is very similar. As when you take the 94 watt-hour capacity recorded by VTT in their reports and divide it by the mass of the cell shown at CES, which was 315 g, you get 298 watt-hours per kilogram, which is almost exactly the same as CT Coatings previous report and it's what you would expect from a high-energy lithium-ion cell. So, to recap, CT Coatings promised some kind of screen-printed sodium-ion cell and instead delivered a lithium-ion cell. Despite the evidence, some people, understandably, don't believe that the Donut Lab tests could be achieved by a

lithium-ion cell, specifically around how fast the cell charged and how it held up at high temperatures. So, I visited a world-leading battery test facility to see what's possible with current lithium-ion cells. The trip was actually for a different video that I'm working on, and we didn't specifically discuss the Donut Lab cell, but it did give me some useful insights for this investigation. I was able to literally hold lithium-ion batteries that have well over 400 watt-hours per kilogram, and others with around 350 watt-hours per kilogram that can fast charge and work at extreme temperatures due to the addition of silicon in the anode. The company I visited, called about energy, gave me these battery top trump cards, and they show the specs of some of the currently available lithium-ion cells on the market, and they are mind-blowing. The remarkable Amprius cells can offer extreme energy densities with 10C fast charging and discharging, and are regularly tested from -30°C to 80°C. However, test engineers also told me these cells are pushed as high as 100°C in motorsport applications. Therefore, showing that all of the tests performed by VTT for Donut Lab could be achieved with state-of-the-art lithium-ion cells. This is all to say that Donut Lab has produced some really impressive battery packs, but the cell chemistry inside is advanced lithium-ion, and that will only last a couple thousand cycles at best and cost a lot of money. Now, if Donut Lab had said they were either working on an experimental screen-printed sodium-ion cell or that they were making state-of-the-art battery packs using advanced lithium-ion cells, no one would have had any problems. But raising money whilst claiming to do one and actually doing the other is where problems really start. And from my talks with ex-Nordic Nano CCO Lauri Poutola, it's why some people involved will likely be testing an all together different type of cell. Chapter five, bare-faced lies. A lot of what we've covered so far is pretty technical and nuanced, and it's possible for Donut Lab and others involved to claim ignorance. Perhaps they genuinely believed that the cell given to them by CT Coatings was a revolutionary screen-printed solid-state sodium-ion cell, and they just didn't have enough expertise to realize it wasn't. However, there are some lies that are clear-cut and easily disproven. One of the most outlandish claims from Donut Lab was that they would have a production vehicle shipped to consumers within the first quarter of this year. Then, on the last day of the quarter, they claimed to have the first production motorcycle from Verge off the production line. But, this is verifiably false and indicates a worrying tendency to ignore the truth. A production vehicle is an industry-standard term, and it means a mass-produced identical or near-identical vehicle that is available for sale to the general public. However, an internal video that was sent to reservation holders after the apparent production vehicle was manufactured said this instead. >> The first bikes off the production line [music] will indeed be our internal fleet. The bikes that we will make for our internal fleet will teach us those valuable lessons to ensure [music] that your motorcycle is unaffected. This

means that the bike you will receive will be built on a platform that has already been refined >> [music] >> and not making you one of the people who suffers from our early mistakes. >> This bike was, by definition, a pre-production vehicle. That's exactly what they just described. But, this gets even worse. In a revealing interview with a Finnish media firm called Helsingin Sanomat, weeks after Verge apparently produced their first production vehicle, Marko admitted, "We have not delivered 400 Wh/kg batteries to customers." He says there are actually different types of cells, and the one cell tested by VTT in their I don't believe series is not even the cell that's going to be shipped to customers anyway. This all completely undermines their argument that they have their miracle battery in production vehicles ready. You might even be getting the impression that Donut Labs doesn't even have a battery that meets all of their miracle specs. And, well, there are actually leaked emails that pretty much confirm this. In leaked emails seen by Helsingin Sanomat, Donut Lab asked CT Coatings when they will actually receive proof of the claimed battery specs. And, apparently from the emails, no proof was ever provided. The evidence clearly shows that they at least lied about the production vehicle. But, from Marko's comments and the leaked emails, it's also clear that the miracle battery doesn't even exist, as if there wasn't enough evidence for that already. However, I do want to say here that the engineers at Donut Lab have actually done a really good job at taking these lithium ion pouch cells and putting them into a prototype battery pack. Charging the pack at 100 kW in the motorcycle is an achievement that they should be proud of. But, it's very different to the screen-printed sodium ion cells with impossible specs that was promised to the public, and more importantly, promised to investors. Now we have all the context, it takes us nicely to the most troubling part of this investigation, the financial misconduct that took money from the little guys to fund a hype campaign that got well out of proportion. The so-called inventions from CT Coatings have been marketed to many companies over the years, but never have blown up enough to blow their cover and stop their operation. However, what happened at CES 2026 was about to change this forever. >> CT Coating was a little bit shocked and surprised of the of the attention that the launch was getting and they were like, "Okay." I didn't talk directly with them straight after the launch, but I understood that [music] they were they were quite shocked. >> The face of this whole marketing push was, of course, Marko Leka Maki, a Finnish entrepreneur with a less than clean past, previously pushing an AI company that promised to build an artificial superintelligence and synthetic life form significantly more capable than humans in every way. You might not be surprised to hear that this didn't work out as promised, either. The AI seemed to have been trained on a lot of things, but mainly British Imperialism. I can only apologize about our past. That was not cool. Now, I will

say exaggerated claims in startups is basically part of doing business at this point, especially with notable examples like Elon Musk often over-promising on product timelines. And in defense of many of the people involved, I think that they really believed in the technology promised by CT Coatings and apparently verified by Donut Lab. >> Yes, at least at least I was believing what we were doing. I cannot tell what [music] what's in everybody else's heads, but but the but the general feeling was at least that we are doing something big and something new that that will revolutionize the world and let's let's go. So, I think everybody was believing in what we were doing. >> But, at this point, we are far beyond using that as an excuse. This sent me on a bit of a side quest, and there is an interesting theory in psychology that I read about, which I think explains why so many of those caught up in the Donut Lab situation might still genuinely believe in the technology, despite the clear evidence against it. It's called escalating commitment, and in a seminal paper by Professor Barry Staw, he studied how it related to investments, showing that within investment decision contexts, negative consequences may actually cause decision makers to increase the commitment of resources and undergo the risk of further negative consequences. Since CES, I've exchanged around 100 messages with the Donut Lab CTO, Ville Pekka, and it's hard to tell, but he still seems to genuinely believe in the battery. However, I will say that when I asked for comments to include in this video, he ignored me and instead wrote me long paragraphs telling me I'll look like a fool for making this, and that everyone I talked to in this video is wrong, and that they're trying to take down Donut Labs, and but I just have to wait a little bit longer and they'll finally show proof that this is all real. I don't know if I have idiot written across my forehead, but I'm not going to play their game any longer. All of this takes me to the most troubling part of the story. Donut Labs' methods of raising money, even if you still believe, against all the evidence, that the promised battery exists, this is inexcusable. >> You mean you're selling [music] a tin foil hat? >> Yeah, I mean, this one famous YouTuber I >> The method of gathering investment by Marko, CEO of Donut Lab, and others involved is >> [music] >> unethical at best and potentially illegal, reinforcing the allegations I mentioned at the start of the video that this is all one big scam. >> [music] >> By using Donut Lab's own internal technical due diligence, which is something I've never heard of before, and the due diligence given by a Finnish legal firm, which had little to no technical analysis in it, Donut Lab was able to start targeting small investors who didn't have the means to request appropriate levels of technical due diligence. >> At least most of the other other investors, they are like small investors who have been putting I don't know, so maybe from tens to some

hundreds of thousands. In total, I know I know that the Donut Lab has more than 1,000 shareholders. >> A large portion of the small-scale investors targeted by Donut Lab seem to have actually come from a crowdfunding exercise on a platform called Springvest in 2023 [music] by Verge Motorcycles. Springvest is a platform that allows small retail investors to buy equity in high-risk, high-reward, deep tech startups. >> [music] >> This is a bit of a strange concept to me for deep tech companies, but apparently in countries like Finland where it's harder to attract big VC money initially, it is slightly more common. So, I'm not going to put this as a red flag right away. That doesn't mean there weren't early signs of exaggeration though, as the investors were sold on a dream of Verge motorcycles that may or may not have been based on any real technical or market analysis. However, thankfully, this is where the Donut Lab miracle battery was coming in to save the company. As Verge motorcycles accelerated towards bankruptcy, the company demerged into three new companies, one of which was Donut Lab. Now, companies restructure or demerge for a variety of valid reasons. However, what happened next is worth some close examination. From records obtained by Niclas Storås from the Finnish publication HS, we can see over 1,300 investors in the Donut Lab shareholder register, many of which coming from the Springvest investment round in Verge with over 900 investors having 50 shares or less, which is likely equal to an initial investment of anywhere between 3 and 23,000 dollars depending on when they put the money in. In an internal newsletter that went out to investors, the demerger of Verge, a struggling motorcycle company, into Donut Labs and two others was seen as a positive thing that somehow boosted the valuation of the company to half a billion euros. If you're wondering at how a struggling motorcycle company's demerger suddenly turns it into a parent company of a half a billion euro portfolio, then you're not alone. But, the answer is of course because of the miracle Donut Lab battery. Now, let's imagine we're in the shoes of Marko Lattermäki, CEO of Donut Lab, and you have two options to get funding for your new miracle battery that's going to change the world. Firstly, you could get third-party technical due diligence from an appropriate firm to validate your battery and manufacturing so you can raise money from venture capital which you now have access to as a sizeable company with global reach. Or secondly, you could do your own unvalidated technical due diligence and present it to a large pool of small investors. A pool of investors who you have already told are making money from their previous investments based on your own valuation. You can promise huge 10x returns to these investors who don't have the means to scrutinize your claims and you can urge them to invest now so they don't miss the next phase of explosive growth. The observant amongst you may realize that one of those sounds like a more traditional deep tech startup route and the other sounds a lot more like a Ponzi scheme using

fabricated gains based on hypothetical valuations to drive more investment. Now you may be unsurprised to learn that the investor letters from Marco suggest that he took option two. One letter to the over 1,000 small investors reads, "If all goes according to plan, we are talking about a potential return on investment of up to 10x in just 12 to 18 months." Another slide says, "It is not yet too late to invest more. On the contrary, it's not yet too late to invest more." Reading that genuinely made me feel sick. These investors came to support an electric motorcycle startup that they cared about and instead they unknowingly became the targets of an investment scheme based around a technology that doesn't exist or at least as the data shows does not meet the claims. Until more data is available, we won't know exactly how much money was taken from these individuals by Donut Labs during these investment rounds but I imagine it was quite a lot of the 25 million that they raised. Whether this crosses any legal thresholds is up to prosecutors and regulators. But to me, claiming ignorance is far too weak of an excuse at this point. I'm sure people at Donut Lab genuinely believed in this technology at the start when CT Coatings brought it to them. In the same way that the people from Holy Volt clearly did, too. But over time, the investment practices that they've employed and the clear tactics to suppress any appropriate scrutiny of the technology just tell me that something bad is going on. From the evidence, it seems pretty clear to me that they were raising money from these investors whilst knowing that the claims about their battery could not be met. This was all done at a $250 million valuation, which was later inflated to 1.25 billion after the CES circus. [music] Following my mention of targeting small-scale investors in my previous video, Donut Lab CTO Ville messaged me to say, "I don't even want to go into your investment thing in the end. Exactly 0% of what you said there is actually happening." This is a provably false statement. So, I don't know why Ville would say that to me unless they're trying to cover something up. This tactic of getting huge amounts of investment from lots of little investors totaling around 25 million dollars is highly unusual, and I believe it was chosen to prevent the promised technology from ever being scrutinized. But eventually, I guess the money started to dry out, >> [music] >> which is when Donut Lab switched to targeting bigger fish. Aiming to take money from potential customers without ever sending them a sample of the cell. >> Did they try and collect any money before sending samples of the battery cells to these potential customers? >> Yes, they did. They were trying to trying to get uh uh commitments to quite large prepayments, and they were using that also uh to support their fundraising from the investors. They were always telling how how huge is their sales pipeline, which word they were using, but uh I I'm not sure if they were if they ever

got any prepayments for [music] for selling the batteries, but they were trying hard. >> One thing I don't know if I'll ever fully understand is the motivation here. I think everyone from Donut Lab and Nordic Nano did really believe in the promised technology from CT Coatings at the start. But at some point, people must have stopped believing. This is what happened to Lori, and it's why he became a whistleblower. The continued lies and deception from people involved tells me that they know something is wrong. So, I assume the motivation can only be short-term financial gain. Scams are as old as time. High-profile examples like Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos set the blueprint for others to come and copy. But this Donut Lab case really got under my skin. Firstly, because it's in my community of engineers trying to make energy and electric power and propulsion cheaper, more secure, [music] and more sustainable. Projects like this from Donut Labs and previous ones from Trevor Milton, who was convicted of fraud for his role leading Nikola Corporation, produce ripples that affect everyone in the industry. It's hard to speak out against these companies because the evidence is often very technical and nuanced, and making your concerns public often opens you up to public attacks, but I personally will not stand here and watch this happen. Companies choosing to exploit this industry are not welcome here. And secondly, why this really gets under my skin is this isn't an example of a company going after big venture capital and taking their money when they can afford to lose it. The victims of this are individuals like you and me who trusted Marco and Donut Lab with their savings and their futures. I'm sure there will still be people who believe in the Donut Lab battery after watching this video. And I get it. People want to believe in something that offers hope in a turbulent world that is currently directly impacting energy, transport, and ultimately the costs that we feel every day. But over time, I hope that those involved will be held accountable. There are many more qualified people than me digging into this situation, including journalists at HS, the largest subscription newsletter in Finland, the Finnish financial authorities, and the Finnish criminal authorities. I think I've said all I can say on the Donut Lab situation now. I just get really riled up and annoyed by how this situation has played out and just the clear lies and abuse of trust that has gone throughout the whole chain. I just don't get it. I I can't I don't get it. Well, anyway, if you enjoyed the video, please consider subscribing to stay up-to-date on the fast-changing world of electric power and propulsion. You might even like some of my other videos like this one I made on how superconducting motors have actually been made practical. And as always, thanks for watching.