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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I'm gonna ask the other way around. Name one successful product by the CEO that has reached mass production and you can get it right now.
See my other comment [1]. There's dozen of failed products. That one AppGyver product is from 15 years ago. Since then, he hasn't created any other product. The motorcycle however is real. The battery may also be. The issue with Solid State Batteries is that it's almost impossible to scale them.
The guy changes the industry he's in as often to match what's currently popular.
Failed startup isn’t a scam, to be a scam it needs to be presented in a way that is designed to collect money but that money be used for something else.
Otherwise YC would have been scam center, very few of YC companies don’t fail.
That’s ridiculous, neither making your first product nor failing is scamming.
In this particular case you can buy motorbikes and sport cars made using electric motors from the same company that makes this battery. So at least 1 real product that I know of.
You cannot buy them. Have you visited their website? The way this works, you pay a non-refundable fee. And if this motorcycle turns out to be real, then you get to pay the rest amount (or cancel and lose some money). Because they manufactured a few units doesn't mean it's scalable (or profitable).
The motorbikes are not new, there are people who bought them and are using them. Switching to the new battery is new but those bikes with motors from this company exist. I think you need to do your research before arguing further.
If your research is YouTube then I'm sorry to disappoint you but those people are affiliated with Verge (or Donut). I don't think there's a single video where someone gives a review and they paid using all their own money, is there? Have you done your research before you started arguing the CEO is legit?
I’m pretty sure if I keep pushing you enough eventually you’ll will make your life about going after me accusing me of who knows what. This means that your opinions should not to be taken seriously as your motivations are unclear.
Yea sure Immich taking zero responsibility for possibly causing damages in hundreds of dollars and not warning their uses is fair, yeah, let them go. Maybe actually read the issues before judging? (oh noes, he blame them so he must be bad!)
I don’t care about immich etc, you just gave me the impression of someone who loves going after people. Your primary participation here appears to be for claiming that people committing scams, so I guess it’s your hobby. Maybe I am wrong but I also don’t see why we should argue as those scam claims are your opinions.
> I don’t care about immich etc, you just gave me the impression of someone who loves going after people
Man I don't want anything else but success for everybody. Once someone fs up, there's nothing bad in improving. Dismissing people because they are pointing bad things out doesn't help (referring to Immich).
> Your primary participation here appears to be fir claiming that are people committing scams
If their website makes fun of their "scam mark" (idonutbelieve.com), then maybe it's not just me? Maybe all other people from YT, Reddit, X are reasonably skeptical? If the battery turns out to actually be real, that's great! (I actually mean it.)
Having said all that, despite our disagreements, have a nice day. Maybe we just set off on a wrong foot and the future will be brighter.
I don't think you're going to see investors crashing out on the internet that they got scammed. The ASI video by the CEO shows exactly that he has no idea what's happening. Seems like an investor pitch scam. I wish that the battery was true tho. It's always amazing to see progress in the world.
I never said that. If I did, prove me by quoting me.
This aside, all I said is that you don't get to hear that on the internet, because such stuff is unpopular and doesn't usually bring attention. And if they signed an NDA, the lawsuit may be not public.
All links were obtained from the CEO's LinkedIn page. The last one is definitely a scam. They ask for your money and promise that their magical algorithm will give you profit.
The first one has fake "featured in", Privacy Policy does not exist and almost all those websites were using Wordpress (perhaps made by the same guy?).
> Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery?
A few Youtubers have pushed the "if it's not a scam, it's probably a novel capacitor" hypothesis, but in their video announcing this test series last weekend, Donut Labs claimed "it's not a capacitor", so I don't know what's going on.
I'm surprised no one here has mentioned around.co yet. They've had this feature for years which was the main reason our team has been using it. Good to see other services catching up.
Just want to heap on with the praise here and say that this was definitely the best experience I've had with any tool trying to add monitoring for a Next.js full-stack application. The Client Sessions tab where I, out of the box, can correlate front-end actions and back-end operations for a particular user is especially nice.
In Berlin, quite a 'cheap' city for tech wages in Europe --you'll probably 'only' get around 100/hour unless it's finance related or funded, but that's still like 800 if you work standard days, which isn't too far off.
Yes, it was my favorite for a while. But recently I switched to GraphCMS for more basic data structure and I love it. Especially the UI.
I think what the market is missing is a sort of locally run CMS that is file based with Sqlite and managed completely with Git. Something that can can be moved around with project easily and have great version control.
Let's say you have a /content folder in your project that is it's own separate git repo, and there you have .md or .txt or sqlite files, and your assets, and there's a browser based client to manage it that runs locally.
Hmm, then I must have come off wrong. That being my final goal does not mean that I care less for what I do. I try to find meaning in my every day work by optimizing for the value I create for the end user and can not be less motivated than when I only work on something because "I have to" or it "being the only way".
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.
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