This doesn't really follow the usual battery scam pattern, does it?
Like, EEStor or Nikola with big claims, timelines pushed years out, raise a ton of money, delay forever. Donut announced at CES and said bikes ship Q1 2026 which is weeks from now. They've raised ~€25M total (QuantumScape has burned through $1.5B+). And apparently they're not doing a big fundraise right now either.
If it's a scam it seems like a really bad strategy? You're basically setting a timer on your own credibility.
I've been reading around and the thing I keep landing on is the Nordic Nano connection. They're a Finnish nanotech company Donut invested in, and they published specs for a "bipolar electrostatic capacitor" with basically identical numbers - 400 Wh/kg, 100k cycles, fireproof. Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery? The VTT report confirms fast charging works but doesn't say anything about energy density, cycle life, or what this thing actually is.
Seems like the energy density and cycle life reports (supposedly coming in the next few weeks) are going to be way more interesting than this one.
I really want this to be true, but the founder launching AGI 9 months ago doesn't help their credibility a lot. And drip-marketing test results seems like a super weird thing to do, whether it's real or it's not.
Don't forget that a lot of scams aren't initially on purpose. Eg Theranos by all accounts very gradually morphed from a mild "fake it till you make it" scheme (mild by Silicon Valley standards at least) into a full-blown scam over years of growth and funding, the lies needing to be deeper and deeper over time to cover up the earlier ones.
I guess all I'm trying to say is the fact that it's a bad strategy for a scam, doesn't really mean it's not a scam.
Those Verge motorcycles appear to actually exist and work though, so that's a data point in favour of this being real.
Yes, I want this too good to be true battery to be real and that's why I'm looking into such things but this claim is false.
He apparently launched "Artificially Superintelligence", which appears to be a marketing term for some architecture this company was working on. The "AGI" term seems to come from people who are going after this CEO.
I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.
This appears to be a much cleaner slate than the titans of AI. I'm inclined to believe that those alleged scams are not scams by SV standard.
Yeah, if it's a scam, at least we don't have to worry about it for too long. If we don't have third-party test results and/or the bikes in testers' hands in the next 37 days, then we can be pretty sure that it's just bogus.
The founders have sketchy track records. They do a carefully managed social media build-up. There are credible rumors that they’ve been simultaneously raising money by cold-calling moderately wealthy people around the country. (Finland has extremely little oversight for private fundraising; you can basically sell shares in your zero-revenue startup to grandma next door — as long as you’re careful about wording your claims as “projections”.)
So lots of red flags. Everyone would love it to be real of course because it’s been a long since Finland’s tech scene had a global hit like Nokia and Supercell… And perhaps the Donut founders are counting on that mood.
The electric motorbike company (Verge Motorcycles) owned by the same people also has such bad accounting/paperwork that they could not find an auditor willing to give an opinion.
"According to the auditor's report, no opinion was given on the company's financial statements because sufficient audit evidence was not available."
The company claims to have a couple million in inventory but no system saying anything about what is in their inventory, 300k in revenue in Finland without any papertrail of it actually happening, 2.5 million in R&D without any explanation/papertrail on what it was spent on (salaries? materials? machines?), etc.
Also the company has taken really expensive loans from family members of the leadership (12% interest which is way over the market rate).
As far as I can tell, no solid-state TS Pro (the TS Pro itself is not an entirely new model and has been around for a couple of years) has been delivered to any customers yet. They're supposed to be delivered in Q1/26, so it shouldn't be too long if they intend to keep their promises. Although if you were to order one today, your bike wouldn't arrive until Q4/26 according to their website.
I don't know about that, the last 4 years everyone is selling magical AI and AGI is around the corner. Including every single top 10 rich people.
Was this AI proven to be any more fake Than Sam Altman, Elon Musk or Dario Amodei's one? Did he took similar level of money and delivered less than the promised?
What's the scam exactly? They don't seem to claim AGI anyway, they say Artificial Super intelligence which is like every AI company claim.
You seem to be on a mission against this CEO, maybe you can clarify a bit more about the scams you believe he is committing?
First report for Donut lab battery is out. Here is the TLDR
Specs
26 Ah nominal capacity at 1C discharge rate
94 Wh nominal energy with 3.6V nominal voltage
Operates within 2.7V – 4.15V recommended range (max charging to 4.3V)
What was verified
5C charging (130A): 0-80% in ~9.5 minutes, 0-100% in ~13.5 minutes
11C charging (286A): 0-80% in ~4.9 minutes, 0-100% in ~7.3 minutes
Successfully delivered 98.4-99.6% of charged capacity even after extreme 11C charging
Thermal Management
Tested with both one-sided and two-sided heat sinks to simulate real-world conditions
With dual heat sinks: Peak temps of 47°C (5C) and 63°C (11C) — well within safe limits
With single heat sink: Reached 61.5°C (5C) and up to 89°C (11C) — still functional but approaching thermal limit
Missing claims
Energy density: No weight and volume was mentioned
Cycle life: VTT ran only 7 test cycles total.
Cost Claims: Nothing about cost is mentioned
Material Claims: No chemical analysis or materials analysis.
Extreme Temperature Performance: No cold weather testing. No high-temperature testing.
No abuse testing: No nail penetration, no overcharge, no short-circuit, no crush tests.
But according to the company website another report will drop next monday (March 2nd).
It’s good to know that it does at least perform about as well as current conventional batteries. The energy density and cycle life were the really off-the-wall claims. It’s exciting to hear that they’re continuing to test, can’t wait for more third party results!
Edit: Reading the report, they talk about “charge capacity” (Amp hours in/out) efficiency of 98.4% to 99.6%, but this seems potentially misleading. The actual charge energy efficiency is more like 90%.
> Successfully delivered 98.4-99.6% of charged capacity even after extreme 11C charging
Note the Wh numbers for discharge vs. charge energy.
> Discharge capacity Charge capacity Discharge energy Charge energy
The energy density isn't out of line if this is a true solid state battery. The cycle life, though, is AFAIK. I don't believe solid states have that sort of cycle life.
Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
The people listed on this report appear to be on LinkedIn, so I guess it will be easy to confirm if the test document is authentic.
> Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
It is a govenrment owned non-profit company.
As one of its services it will independently verify your product/invention/whatever works as claimed (for a bunch of money).
Careful though, this test explicitly only tests the charge and discharge capabilities of the battery, not whether it's a solid state battery or not. According to ChatGPT, these results would in theory also be possible with a normal Li-ion battery. I am really hoping this is real though! And waiting for further tests.
I’ve been digging into the data (using Gemini and a few other sources). The claims behind https://idonutbelieve.com/ are pretty bold. I’d like to be optimistic, but I’m going to wait for more independent verification before drawing any conclusions.
I desperately want this to be real but LK-99 thought me to be skeptical of big announcements. AFAIK the Finnish media went brutal on them and science YouTubers reported some rumors about sketchy stuff but they seem to be rolling so far.
VTT appear to be a solid institution, so we will find out soon I guess.
Elon Musk sells self driving cars since 10 years that don't self drive but his cars are actually decent cars and his rockets are revolutionary. Also, who isn't selling magical AGI since the last 4 years?
I think i will judge the battery and the magical AGI separately. The guy also sells magical motors that appear to be real with people riding motorbikes with those motors.
Sorry, I was trying to compose a post but I was a minute late so copy-pasted the content as a comment and forgot to adopt. Removing the redundant link. Thanks.
BTW, the people who conducted the test appear to be on LinkedIn. I guess its pretty easy to confirm if the test on the company site is authentic.
Actually, there are a bunch of other variables (energy density, stability, discharge current, etc. etc.), so the probability of a technology that improves one significantly without negatively affecting at least one other is vanishingly small. Hence the number of overhyped battery technologies that get reported but never productised.
They claim not only fast charging, long life and low cost, but also very high energy density, no degradation in low temperature, no thermal runaway, non-hazardous materials and no "geopolitical" needed.
Good to have a VTT report confirming the charging speeds, but the actual differentiator would be the energy density I guess, given that BYD has already proven <10min charging with an LFP battery in an actual car. (https://volta.foundation/battery-report-2025/ pg. 161)
The massive amount of production-oriented research in solid state and semi solid state batteries indicates to me that this stuff is coming soon in a big way. I've been curious about buying an electric car recently, and if I buy one right now it would only be a used one, don't want to fully invest in something about to be obselete.
The whole industry is always working on improved batteries. But it's a long road from lab-scale to mass production, and often improvements in one area have downsides in another.
New generations of cells that improve energy density usually start out more expensive than existing chemistries, so they show up at the high end of the market first and work their way down.
If we do get truly improved solid-state batteries available in EVs in the next 5 years, it will likely start at the high end of the market and work its way down over many years to cheaper segments as production capacity ramps up. The base model EVs aren't going to suddenly have their batteries swapped out with ones that are twice as good for the same price.
I make the same argument when I buy a computer. If I just wait a little longer, there will be a faster cheaper version of what I can buy today. When buying anything that depreciates, the best strategy is to wait (possibly forever) and only buy when you really need it now.
I hope you are right, but maybe this one is not like the previous ones. Micron leaving consumer market sounds like the real money will be on the AI hardware market.
Personally I bought my new laptop a month ago. Let's hope when I have to buy the next one this craziness will be history.
The pdf also has a picture of it where you could possibly reverse Engineer the dimensions based on the other things in the picture. Looks very flat like an iPad battery
> This project included independent charging performance tests on the energy storage devices supplied by the customer, which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
> which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
Because that's not independent verification that the device tested actually _is_ a solid state battery. Just that whatever was tested had certain charging characteristics.
Tbh the exciting part isn’t so much the composition but whether it can actually meet the claimed performance. It could be made of wet gym socks for all I care if it can do 100k charge cycles at 90degC with comparable energy density and specific power to LiFePO.
But that’s the point I’m making. You’re taking the claims that Donut Labs is making about it being a new type of battery at face value. Having someone verify charging characteristics isn’t that helpful without simultaneously verifying that the battery actually is what they’re claiming.
This doesn't really follow the usual battery scam pattern, does it?
Like, EEStor or Nikola with big claims, timelines pushed years out, raise a ton of money, delay forever. Donut announced at CES and said bikes ship Q1 2026 which is weeks from now. They've raised ~€25M total (QuantumScape has burned through $1.5B+). And apparently they're not doing a big fundraise right now either.
If it's a scam it seems like a really bad strategy? You're basically setting a timer on your own credibility.
I've been reading around and the thing I keep landing on is the Nordic Nano connection. They're a Finnish nanotech company Donut invested in, and they published specs for a "bipolar electrostatic capacitor" with basically identical numbers - 400 Wh/kg, 100k cycles, fireproof. Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery? The VTT report confirms fast charging works but doesn't say anything about energy density, cycle life, or what this thing actually is.
Seems like the energy density and cycle life reports (supposedly coming in the next few weeks) are going to be way more interesting than this one.
I really want this to be true, but the founder launching AGI 9 months ago doesn't help their credibility a lot. And drip-marketing test results seems like a super weird thing to do, whether it's real or it's not.
Don't forget that a lot of scams aren't initially on purpose. Eg Theranos by all accounts very gradually morphed from a mild "fake it till you make it" scheme (mild by Silicon Valley standards at least) into a full-blown scam over years of growth and funding, the lies needing to be deeper and deeper over time to cover up the earlier ones.
I guess all I'm trying to say is the fact that it's a bad strategy for a scam, doesn't really mean it's not a scam.
Those Verge motorcycles appear to actually exist and work though, so that's a data point in favour of this being real.
> the founder launching AGI 9 months ago
Yes, I want this too good to be true battery to be real and that's why I'm looking into such things but this claim is false.
He apparently launched "Artificially Superintelligence", which appears to be a marketing term for some architecture this company was working on. The "AGI" term seems to come from people who are going after this CEO.
I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.
This appears to be a much cleaner slate than the titans of AI. I'm inclined to believe that those alleged scams are not scams by SV standard.
Yeah, if it's a scam, at least we don't have to worry about it for too long. If we don't have third-party test results and/or the bikes in testers' hands in the next 37 days, then we can be pretty sure that it's just bogus.
The weirdest tech story in Finland right now.
The founders have sketchy track records. They do a carefully managed social media build-up. There are credible rumors that they’ve been simultaneously raising money by cold-calling moderately wealthy people around the country. (Finland has extremely little oversight for private fundraising; you can basically sell shares in your zero-revenue startup to grandma next door — as long as you’re careful about wording your claims as “projections”.)
So lots of red flags. Everyone would love it to be real of course because it’s been a long since Finland’s tech scene had a global hit like Nokia and Supercell… And perhaps the Donut founders are counting on that mood.
The electric motorbike company (Verge Motorcycles) owned by the same people also has such bad accounting/paperwork that they could not find an auditor willing to give an opinion.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20205916 (article in Finnish)
"According to the auditor's report, no opinion was given on the company's financial statements because sufficient audit evidence was not available."
The company claims to have a couple million in inventory but no system saying anything about what is in their inventory, 300k in revenue in Finland without any papertrail of it actually happening, 2.5 million in R&D without any explanation/papertrail on what it was spent on (salaries? materials? machines?), etc.
Also the company has taken really expensive loans from family members of the leadership (12% interest which is way over the market rate).
But the motorcycles do exist and use these batteries don’t they?
Has no one bought one and torn it open yet?
As far as I can tell, no solid-state TS Pro (the TS Pro itself is not an entirely new model and has been around for a couple of years) has been delivered to any customers yet. They're supposed to be delivered in Q1/26, so it shouldn't be too long if they intend to keep their promises. Although if you were to order one today, your bike wouldn't arrive until Q4/26 according to their website.
It's disappointing that this merry band of serial scammers are tarnishing Finland's reputation.
It's also a bit sus that someone creates an account just to bash them, when they themselves are already doing a great job to make it look like a scam.
Can you plase give more information about the scams(not opinions about scam but actual scams where he was exposed) this guy committed?
Here's the CEO Marko Lehtimäki selling his magic AGI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilgJKjiDLV8 :D
He's been a busy beaver!
I don't know about that, the last 4 years everyone is selling magical AI and AGI is around the corner. Including every single top 10 rich people.
Was this AI proven to be any more fake Than Sam Altman, Elon Musk or Dario Amodei's one? Did he took similar level of money and delivered less than the promised?
What's the scam exactly? They don't seem to claim AGI anyway, they say Artificial Super intelligence which is like every AI company claim.
You seem to be on a mission against this CEO, maybe you can clarify a bit more about the scams you believe he is committing?
Thank you for sharing this, relevant context...
Srsly. So it's all bogus then?
Yep, so it seems!
First report for Donut lab battery is out. Here is the TLDR
Specs
What was verified Thermal Management Missing claims But according to the company website another report will drop next monday (March 2nd).It’s good to know that it does at least perform about as well as current conventional batteries. The energy density and cycle life were the really off-the-wall claims. It’s exciting to hear that they’re continuing to test, can’t wait for more third party results!
Edit: Reading the report, they talk about “charge capacity” (Amp hours in/out) efficiency of 98.4% to 99.6%, but this seems potentially misleading. The actual charge energy efficiency is more like 90%.
> Successfully delivered 98.4-99.6% of charged capacity even after extreme 11C charging
Note the Wh numbers for discharge vs. charge energy.
> Discharge capacity Charge capacity Discharge energy Charge energy
> Cycle 1 26.109 Ah 26.159 Ah 91.021 Wh 100.793 Wh
Yup, those 2 are the ones I really want to see.
The energy density isn't out of line if this is a true solid state battery. The cycle life, though, is AFAIK. I don't believe solid states have that sort of cycle life.
Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
The people listed on this report appear to be on LinkedIn, so I guess it will be easy to confirm if the test document is authentic.
The announcement of the test: https://youtu.be/d2QU_LpkSPs
Hopefully, soon we will find out if this seemingly "too good to be true" is a revolution or something else.
> Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
It is a govenrment owned non-profit company.
As one of its services it will independently verify your product/invention/whatever works as claimed (for a bunch of money).
https://www.vttresearch.com/en
Careful though, this test explicitly only tests the charge and discharge capabilities of the battery, not whether it's a solid state battery or not. According to ChatGPT, these results would in theory also be possible with a normal Li-ion battery. I am really hoping this is real though! And waiting for further tests.
I’ve been digging into the data (using Gemini and a few other sources). The claims behind https://idonutbelieve.com/ are pretty bold. I’d like to be optimistic, but I’m going to wait for more independent verification before drawing any conclusions.
I desperately want this to be real but LK-99 thought me to be skeptical of big announcements. AFAIK the Finnish media went brutal on them and science YouTubers reported some rumors about sketchy stuff but they seem to be rolling so far.
VTT appear to be a solid institution, so we will find out soon I guess.
> They also published the report here: https://pub-fee113bb711e441db5c353d2d31abbb3.r2.dev/VTT_CR_0...
That's the same link. Is there a way to attest that this is an official VTT report?
The person whose signature is on it, is listed on VTTs website with the same title.
Considering the amount of publicity this thing gets, VTT or the person will publicly refute it pretty soon if it's a fake.
Also, VTT had publicly confirmed earlier that they had conducted tests for Donut Lab.
I'm confident the document and tests are real, but other shenanigans are still possible (and likely IMO).
The PDF is digitally signed with a cert from the Finnish „Digital and Population Data Services Agency“
I think it is safe to assume, given the buzz all around the donut battery, that VTT would immediately release a statement if this report was fake.
edit: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/news-and-ideas/donut-lab-comm...
Unfortunately that's not the same as VTT.
VTT would be more like "National Institute of Scientific Research"
Well there's this press release they would publish a report: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/news-and-ideas/donut-lab-comm... with as author the same name on the digital signature "Petri Söderena" for Organisation "Teknologian tutkimuskeskus VTT" and the chain is attested by "DVV Organisational Certificates - G4E" which is on the EU/EEA trusted list: https://eidas.ec.europa.eu/efda/trust-services/browse/eidas/... (by name and key signature). Looks like a legit VTT document to me.
It says its sign by this guy: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/news-and-ideas/petri-soderena...
He has an e-mail address and a phone number, I doubt that if the report is falsified it won't come out.
I just found a video of the same guy selling some magical AGI thing 9 months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilgJKjiDLV8
Promising the moon and stars just like with Donut.
Donut Labs also had a video presentation of some kind of automotive design software that also sounded too good to be true.
This guy is a serial scammer.
Elon Musk sells self driving cars since 10 years that don't self drive but his cars are actually decent cars and his rockets are revolutionary. Also, who isn't selling magical AGI since the last 4 years?
I think i will judge the battery and the magical AGI separately. The guy also sells magical motors that appear to be real with people riding motorbikes with those motors.
Sorry, I was trying to compose a post but I was a minute late so copy-pasted the content as a comment and forgot to adopt. Removing the redundant link. Thanks.
BTW, the people who conducted the test appear to be on LinkedIn. I guess its pretty easy to confirm if the test on the company site is authentic.
Fast charging, long life, low cost – pick two.
Actually, there are a bunch of other variables (energy density, stability, discharge current, etc. etc.), so the probability of a technology that improves one significantly without negatively affecting at least one other is vanishingly small. Hence the number of overhyped battery technologies that get reported but never productised.
They claim not only fast charging, long life and low cost, but also very high energy density, no degradation in low temperature, no thermal runaway, non-hazardous materials and no "geopolitical" needed.
Good to have a VTT report confirming the charging speeds, but the actual differentiator would be the energy density I guess, given that BYD has already proven <10min charging with an LFP battery in an actual car. (https://volta.foundation/battery-report-2025/ pg. 161)
The massive amount of production-oriented research in solid state and semi solid state batteries indicates to me that this stuff is coming soon in a big way. I've been curious about buying an electric car recently, and if I buy one right now it would only be a used one, don't want to fully invest in something about to be obselete.
The whole industry is always working on improved batteries. But it's a long road from lab-scale to mass production, and often improvements in one area have downsides in another.
New generations of cells that improve energy density usually start out more expensive than existing chemistries, so they show up at the high end of the market first and work their way down.
If we do get truly improved solid-state batteries available in EVs in the next 5 years, it will likely start at the high end of the market and work its way down over many years to cheaper segments as production capacity ramps up. The base model EVs aren't going to suddenly have their batteries swapped out with ones that are twice as good for the same price.
I make the same argument when I buy a computer. If I just wait a little longer, there will be a faster cheaper version of what I can buy today. When buying anything that depreciates, the best strategy is to wait (possibly forever) and only buy when you really need it now.
Until you wait too much and end in a RAM shortage period due to AI...
My limited understanding of RAM prices are that they are very cyclical. Very expensive followed by very cheap. You just have to be willing to wait.
I hope you are right, but maybe this one is not like the previous ones. Micron leaving consumer market sounds like the real money will be on the AI hardware market.
Personally I bought my new laptop a month ago. Let's hope when I have to buy the next one this craziness will be history.
“Soon” is likely 5-10 years easily though.
Would be nice if they added some more detail about the battery like dimensions and weight, or did I miss that part.
You can take a look at the announcement video https://youtu.be/Y-aPS2AwMbc?si=RD4Ja8tJggLPgXGj
The pdf also has a picture of it where you could possibly reverse Engineer the dimensions based on the other things in the picture. Looks very flat like an iPad battery
As understand it the battery is 26 Ah and looks to be the size of my 20 mAh powerpack at home.
It seems From the video they don't look much bigger than a cellphone.
That was previously announced and CES and was described as "can be any shape and any size and any voltage within a reason".
Fairly important bit here at the end:
> This project included independent charging performance tests on the energy storage devices supplied by the customer, which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
> which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
It's almost like there an implied "wait for part 7 guys and remember to like and subscribe"
why?
Because that's not independent verification that the device tested actually _is_ a solid state battery. Just that whatever was tested had certain charging characteristics.
Tbh the exciting part isn’t so much the composition but whether it can actually meet the claimed performance. It could be made of wet gym socks for all I care if it can do 100k charge cycles at 90degC with comparable energy density and specific power to LiFePO.
But that’s the point I’m making. You’re taking the claims that Donut Labs is making about it being a new type of battery at face value. Having someone verify charging characteristics isn’t that helpful without simultaneously verifying that the battery actually is what they’re claiming.