Peter Carlsson on financial strategy
From Lessons from Peter Carlsson after the Rise and Fall of Northvolt · · MCJ
“We were cutting 25% of our expenses outside the gigafactory. Do we do a trimming and bet that that we can later that year fill up the barns with some additional funding. We did that bet and in hindsight, obviously that bet didn't fall out, which of course lead me to say, okay, we should have cut more of the branches.”
On , Peter Carlsson, CEO & Co-Founder at Northvolt, spoke about financial strategy during Lessons from Peter Carlsson after the Rise and Fall of Northvolt on MCJ.
About Peter Carlsson
Peter Carlsson, co-founder and former CEO of Northvolt, discussed the company's bankruptcy and his subsequent ventures in a May 2026 interview. He stated that Northvolt filed for bankruptcy at the end of 2024 after raising over $13 billion. Carlsson said that in the months following the bankruptcy, he co-founded RS Machina, an agentic operating system for manufacturing, and Sonder Labs, a company focused on sodium battery technology. He noted that Sonder Labs was created with the former leader of Northvolt's R&D team, Andreas Haas, and that they are currently working with India. Carlsson offered several observations about European industrial competitiveness. He said that "Europe needs to decide where and how to compete or partner with the Chinese electro-industrial stack, which is getting better, faster, and cheaper every day." He also questioned whether Europe can maintain its current regulatory environment, stating that "it is three and a half times more expensive to build a battery factory in Europe than it is in China." Reflecting on Northvolt's collapse, Carlsson said the company made a bet to cut 25% of expenses outside the gigafactory while hoping to secure additional funding, adding that "in hindsight, obviously that bet didn't fall out." He expressed optimism about Europe's future, saying he sees "really good opportunities" in hardware and the green transition.