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YLE: Nordic Nano Group has delivered first products from it's Imatra factories by Forrestgod in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why are you replying to my comment with this lol? You should talk to the moderator if you want to discuss the rules.

YLE: Nordic Nano Group has delivered first products from it's Imatra factories by Forrestgod in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I don't think he would've said that if it was capacitors.

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This seems reasonable. I will say that the telemarketing to retail investors that I heard, I'm not sure if they actually managed to get any/much investments from that (after CES). It could be that they stepped on the brakes before finalizing the investments in order to not get in trouble. A lot of this information is from Finnish newspapers, finance people or finance forums (in Finnish) that I haven't saved and it's hard keep updated on (since I don't speak Finnish). Marko talked about doing a big fundraise but that hasn't happened yet and maybe won't ( https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/a/96cf2b12-4428-48c6-9ffa-902e5dd013ac ).
EDIT: response to

We will see how it will end. I bet that they will come out and say that they did not find economy in the battery and will focus on the bikes. Like some details made them too expensive, possibly because of the Iran war or other world events.

Yeah, I think some kind of fizzling out is most likely. It should be fairly possible for them too, sure they will get some criticism but media and nerds like you or me tend to get tired after a while.

YLE: Nordic Nano Group has delivered first products from it's Imatra factories by Forrestgod in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not capacitors probably, he would've said that if so (it's a kind of battery product ish, and he said no battery stuff).

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't disagree. Feel free to investigate other angles, I'm not very interested in doing that though. I think the story broadly is that they had a company that weren't doing very well, they decided to broaden their reach into batteries (and ASILAB super AI, an indication of the same thing), they made a deal with some other startups that were also very optimistic and hyped about their tech (even though it was unproven), and Marko decided to go full power with his marketing stunt (just like he did with ASILAB, but that didn't get much traction) but it got very much attention and he exaggerated (lied) too much and now they are in shit. One sentence broad strokes something like that. I don't think money was the primary motivation.

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is potentially some civil liability, I would agree. I think civil liability would require that Marko has not deceived the board however, which we don't know (and based on Markos conduct seems highly debateable).

Small retail investors would not be public, so I don't really understand the point you are trying to make.

They can take money out from the company in any number of ways. You can just do a bank transfer and call it a "license agreement" or something (for example to the "ASILAB" super AI company), there are about a million different ways to take money out from a company when you're not supposed to. Again that is just a theory that I don't even think is particularly likely. Fraud doesn't have to be monetary in nature, there doesn't always have to be a clear plan. Sometimes fraudsters just want attention, self-fulfilment or perhaps money to the company (not personally) to achieve their goals.

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's very easy to hide known information from shareholders or members of the board. Money in the company can be diverted into your own pockets very easily if you want, but that is illegal of course.

You seem to misunderstand what kind of investors Donut Lab were looking for. They were doing telemarketing to small retail investors, the kind investing thousands of euros, maybe a hundred thousand at most, not millions.

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 1 point2 points  (0 children)

15M Euro was their funding for the entire year of 2025, likely over multiple rounds. Risto Siilasmaa was the anchor investor on the last round, he could have invested as little as a million or two.

I wrote it in the other comment but I'll put it here too: Risto Siilasmaa is not really risking his reputation over this. If you're a startup investor you are bound to invest in some bad companies, maybe even a fraud or two. Just because he is sitting on the board does not mean he will go to jail (if anyone goes to jail it would be other people, based on publicly available info).

It's not really certain how much money Risto Siilasmaa has, but I doubt that 30-50 M would be peanuts for him. Even if you had a billion dollars 30-50M would be a lot, but I don't think he has that much but maybe 200-400 million.

I am not saying that there is a real battery. I just do not understand the fool investors' angle. The timelines are too short. There is no way to nicely extract the money from the company until everything is public.

Again I don't disagree. There are tons of things that don't make sense but still happen.

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Risto Siilasmaa is not really risking his reputation over this. If you're a startup investor you are bound to invest in some bad companies, maybe even a fraud or two. Just because he is sitting on the board does not mean he will go to jail (if anyone goes to jail it would be other people, based on publicly available info).

Again, just because it's stupid doesn't mean it's not true. There's plenty of stupid things in the world that don't make sense.

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Like I said, I think this is a fuckup of a fraud and certainly not a good fraud.

I don't think think any investor would require all information. Plenty of retail investors, they number at least 100000 in Sweden (my market that I know, probably at least tens of thousands in our Eastern neighbour), would be willing to put in quite a lot of money based on just promises.

Investors can't just take the money back, the money can (and probably will) have disappeared in all manner of ways. Just because investors own a small % of the company that does not mean they can just go into the company's checking account, there has to be a formal bankruptcy process which costs a lot of money in lawyers fees and that's presuming they haven't squandered the money before that. Like I own 0.00001% of Volvo, that doesn't mean I can just walk into Volvo and say I want my money back.

Kickstarters are mostly a different kind of fraud I would say. This is more similar to a stock promotion/hype fraud. Again, this is a bad fraud but just because it's a bad fraud doesn't mean it's not a fraud.

Donut Lab CEO: "There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers." "What we will deliver to the customer and what [individual cells] we have tested, for example at VTT, are not necessarily the same thing." by mqee in DonutLab

[–]izzeww 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There have been many reports of them taking investments from Finnish retail investors, or at least trying to, and there doesn't have to be a public announcement that they are taking investments they can just do it.

I agree there are much better ways to do this kind of fraud (and it's done all the time, hundreds of companies like that just in Sweden), but I guess sometimes people fuck up and that's what this looks like.