SAN FRANCISCO, July 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Estes today unveiled the Levius™ platform, the result of its multi-year effort to unlock magnesium as a viable solution for ruggedized, liquid-cooled, high and low-voltage energy storage systems. Today's announcement follows Estes' first commercial shipment of the Magnus™ battery system, now in customer hands, with more shipments planned this year under multiple signed contracts with rail, marine, and on-highway customers; a major milestone in the industrialization of full-stack magnesium processing for automotive, commercial, and industrial applications.
Magnesium is the lightest structural metal on earth, yet industry adoption has faced persistent challenges due to concerns with corrosion, flammability, manufacturability, and an underdeveloped supply chain. Building on decades of advances by the global magnesium community, Estes has developed an integrated processing stack to address these barriers by combining its proprietary flame-retardant magnesium alloy with large-format semi-solid casting and an ultra-energy-efficient coating process.
“Electrification is an efficiency problem, and efficiency, at its limit, is a mass problem,” said Dustin Grace, CEO and co-founder of Estes. “Every kilogram we remove is a kilogram our customers can convert into range, payload, or mission capability. Mass is the constraint that defines what electrification can and cannot do. The industry has spent a decade and billions of dollars optimizing cell materials to improve energy density, and that progress is real. We took a complementary approach, with a focus on materials and scalability at the system level, leveraging cells available today.”
Levius™ enables highly integrated, lightweight structures compatible with cell-to-pack, cell-to-chassis, and cell-to-airframe architectures, allowing battery systems to be directly integrated into mobility, marine, aerospace, rail, and defense applications. Estes' flagship Magnus™ battery pack exceeds 225 Wh/kg and 375 Wh/L at the system level using commercially available heavy-cycle-capable cells, a 30% improvement over comparable systems on the market. Paired with next-generation silicon-rich cells, a Magnus™ battery pack can exceed 280 Wh/kg.
Estes' alloy has been third-party tested to meet FAA safety standards, making it suitable for use inside aircraft cabins. The coating process reduces energy consumption by over 70 percent compared to conventional approaches, producing ruggedized components fit for the most demanding outdoor environments. End-to-end within a single facility, Levius™ can process structural components exceeding two meters in length and 25 kilograms in mass at a throughput of one part per minute, compatible with automotive manufacturing cycle times.
“Magnesium's potential has been understood for decades; our two years of dedicated work were about carrying that science into industrial production,” said Cagkan Yildiz, CTO and co-founder of Estes. “Our breakthrough was not developing a single material; it was engineering the end-to-end manufacturing system. We've built a family of flame-retardant magnesium alloys that retain full castability using the most advanced metal forming and coating technologies available, reengineered to operate as a full-stack solution from ingot to finished product. That is what we are bringing to market; the capability to bring the right atoms to the right form, fit, and function at speed and scale, under a unified operating system.”
“We are shipping commercial-grade systems today and putting real battery systems into customer hands,” said Grace. “Our focus now is scale: expanding production to meet the customer contracts already signed. We believe magnesium will be foundational to the next generation of electrified systems, and Levius™ is how we intend to unlock that potential for our partners at scale, starting with battery systems.”
About Estes
Estes Energy Solutions, Inc. is a U.S.-based developer and manufacturer of advanced magnesium components and battery systems for electrified air, land, and sea applications, built upon a domestic supply chain from raw material through finished system. By combining proprietary materials, patented thermo-structural architectures, and industrial-scale vertical integration, Estes delivers lightweight, mission-ready power systems for automotive, commercial, defense, and industrial applications. Founded in 2024 by engineers and operators from Tesla, Sila, and Cummins, Estes is backed by BMW iVentures, Fortescue Capital, DCVC, Gigascale, Baukunst and other deep-technology investors.
Media Contact
media@estes.energy
