Jagdeep Singh of QuantumScape wants to be a captain of industry
QuantumScape today announced that it will become a public company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Founded by Jagdeep (Jay) Singh in 2010, the San Jose, California based company is developing solid-state lithium batteries for electric vehicles. The batteries, being developed by a team of 200 scientists and engineers, will be available in 2025.
“When we backed QuantumScape ten years ago, we knew it was a bold vision to transform one of the world's largest industries,” said Vinod Khosla, of Khosla Ventures and a member of the company’s board of directors in a statement. QuantumScape’s technology, Khosla said, addresses “the single largest cost component and deficiency of electric cars, the battery. By enabling greater range and much faster charge times…(the) technology will assist EVs in becoming significantly more competitive with traditional internal combustion engine vehicles, paving the way for greater adoption and a greener future.” Khosla, with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion, was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
QuantumScape’s public listing is occurring through its merger with Kensington Capital, a shell company trading on the stock exchange. The transaction valued QuantumScape at $3.3 billion. But Kensigton’s stock surged 86% today, pushing the valuation to about $6 billion.
As part of the public listing, QuantumScape raised $1 billion, including from Volkswagen and the Qatar Investment Authority. This will give the company sufficient funding till it starts producing the batteries, including the set-up of at least one factory, Singh told CNBC. Volkswagen, which earlier invested $300 million, will partner in the production of the battery, which it plans to use in its electric vehicles.
QuantumScape batteries are expected to be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than those being made by Tesla and other competitors. Singh’s venture has hence also gotten funding from Bill Gates, who expects its technology to reduce automobile emissions and thus fight climate change.
Singh, 53, was born in New Delhi, the son of a statistician for the World Health Organization. He came to the US, when his father was transferred there on his job. An athletic, former marathoner, Singh is a Sikh who wears a turban.
At 15, he enrolled at the University of Maryland, for a degree in computer engineering. In 1987, at age 20, he joined Hewlett Packard. There he worked in telecommunications networking, which was undergoing major technological changes. He left HP after four years.
In 1993, he founded Airsoft, which makes software to improve telecommunications networks. He sold it for $65 million. Singh then got an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1998, Singh founded Lightera Networks, a telecommunications hardware company. It was acquired a year later by Ciena for $429 million. Singh stayed on as president of Ciena’s core switching division for less than a year. Ciena has a current market value of $7 billion, In 2001, he founded Infinera, a telecommunications equipment company, which currently has a market value of $1.2 billion.
Singh has ambitious goals for QuantumScape. In 1999, while studying for a Masters’ in electrical engineering at Stanford University, after selling Lightera, he was honored by MIT as one of the top innovators under 35. At that time, he told the MIT Technology Review that he plans to switch from an entrepreneur to captain of industry - building a company that will be a "lasting piece of the economy."
