Hi there, Felix here. I wanted to share this week an episode from the Financial Times podcast, Behind the Money. Behind the Money is a show that takes you inside the business and finance news of the moment with insight and analysis from the journalists who know the stories best.

Each week host Michaela Senderra and an FT reporter tell one story that's shaping a corner

of global finance or business from Exxon's arrival in Guyana to Wall Street's embrace of

private credit. Today, we're sharing an episode from December 4 called Why North Vault Failed

to Become Europe's battery champion.

This is about a Swedish battery startup that was founded by former Tesla executives,

became the continent's best-funded startup, and then kind of went a little bit pear-shaped.

Keep listening to hear more and follow behind the money wherever you're listening now.

In February 2017, the FTs Nordic and Baltic correspondent, Richard Milne, is just getting back

into the swing of things after a vacation. And he starts going through his inbox to catch up

on what he's missed. While I was away, I got an email from a contact telling me about this interesting new company.

The name of the company doesn't really stand out, but their pitch does.

It had a terrible name at that time, SGF Energy.

Nobody had written about it, but it was run by these two Europeans who used

to work for Tesla. So they were looking to be the first European company to build a gigafactory,

which is basically just a giant factory that makes batteries. Asia is leading the global battery industry at the time.

But this little Swedish startup wants to change that.

So their big pitch was to be the green European alternative

to the already sort of dominant Asian battery players.

You know, this is something that European industry needed.

It didn't have.

I was both skeptical and intrigued.

...