Unbound Potential: The Journey to Liberate Energy Storage
The story of Unbound Potential begins not in a gleaming laboratory or a glass-walled conference room, but on a dusty pilgrimage route across Europe. It’s the story of David Taylor, a man who embraces falilure as an opportunity to grow. His journey is a compelling testament to how personal crisis and unwavering determination can birth a vision with the potential to make the world a more sustainable place.
The Call to Adventure: A Path to Self-Discovery
David Taylor’s academic journey began anything but straightforward. Enrolled in physics at the Technical University of Munich, he found himself in a life phase marked by uncertainty and lack of focus. “I first started studying physics at the Technical University in Munich, but I was at a point in my life that was very difficult for me, and I started the studies without really being present and in focus,” he recalls with disarming honesty. This early setback proved to be an unexpected blessing. With a free semester ahead, Taylor made a decision that would shape his life: he laced up his hiking boots and set out from his Bavarian hometown toward Spain.
This months-long walk to the westernmost point of the continent became a profound, transformative experience. Far from the expectations and pressures of daily life, he learned to focus on the essentials and trust in his own strength. “I walked to Spain and that was a really shaping experience in my life where I learned that I can really rely on myself. I’m enough for myself. And that gave me very strong confidence – which still keeps powering me until today,” he explains. This journey laid the foundation for the resilience and determination that would later become his trademark as a founder.
The Return and the Search for Meaning
With renewed self-confidence, Taylor returned to the academic world, this time at the University of Applied Sciences, where he studied engineering physics. “I restarted studying at the University of Applied Sciences, engineering physics,” he states. He found his passion at the intersection of physics and engineering, earned his doctorate in microsystems and microelectronics, and established himself as a postdoctoral researcher at the prestigious ETH Zurich. Yet despite academic success, a sense of urgency grew within him. “During the postdoc time, the kids got older and I had this very intense feeling that there’s not a lot of time. And the years where I can really build something that has a lasting difference and where I can also witness the impact of, are limited,” he reflects.
This drive to make a tangible contribution came at a time when the world was crying out for solutions to the climate crisis. The energy transition was in full swing, but a central problem remained unsolved: storing renewable energy. Solar and wind power are inherently volatile. Without efficient, scalable, and cost-effective storage solutions, the vision of a future entirely based on renewable energy would remain a dream. It was precisely here, at this critical juncture, that David Taylor found his mission.
The Spark of Innovation: A Battery Without Boundaries
“The idea came when I was doing literature research. I stumbled across a paper from a research institute in Madrid. And they published a paper about a membrane-less flow battery,” he recounts. Classic flow batteries, which store energy in liquid electrolytes, rely on an expensive and vulnerable membrane to separate the two fluids. This membrane often accounts for up to 40% of costs and limits the system’s lifespan. The idea of simply eliminating it was bold and elegant.
The Madrid researchers demonstrated that it was theoretically possible to use two immiscible liquids – similar to oil and water that exchange ions at their natural interface without mixing. However, practical implementation and especially scalability posed an immense challenge. “They describe a single cell. So they show a new concept of how to build a flow battery without a membrane. And I felt like this is probably hard to scale up. And there is an intrinsic fluid dynamics fluid control challenge in that, which I can solve because this is what I actually do,” Taylor recognized. Here, his long-standing expertise in microfluidics met a global challenge. The spark had ignited.
The Fellowship: A Team Takes Shape
A revolutionary idea alone isn’t enough. Taylor knew he needed a team that shared his vision and brought the diverse competencies required to realize it. As fate would have it, the puzzle pieces fell into place almost by themselves. “While this feeling emerged in myself, there was a magic moment where there was an idea for a new technology in my head, but around me there was a team forming almost by itself, my co-founders, which is coming into my life or back into my life, bringing exactly the key skills and expertise I needed for implementing my idea,” he describes.
Dr. Anetta Platek-Mielczarek, a brilliant electrochemist with years of experience in battery research, was immediately fascinated by the concept. “My CTO and I started in the neighboring group at the department of Mechanical Engineering around the time, she has built electrochemical storage technologies for the last 12 years. So she was really a specialist in that. And I said, Anetta, I have found a new paper on a new kind of flow battery technology,” Taylor recalls. Her expertise in developing novel electrolytes was key to perfecting the chemistry behind the membrane-free battery. She became the company’s CTO.
Shortly after, Dr. Emilio dal Re, joined the team, a PhD economist with a sharp mind for finance and strategy. He took on the role of CFO/COO and brought the necessary business expertise to transform a scientific idea into a viable business model. The core team was completed by Dr. Federico Paratore, a systems design expert, and Pier Giuseppe Rivano, Chief Business Officer and co-founder, who contributed critical business development and go-to-market experience. Along with other specialists, this multidisciplinary team, united by the mission to break the chains of energy storage, gave birth to Unbound Potential.
The Trials: From Workbench to Million-Dollar Investment
The path from idea to prototype was rocky and full of challenges. The team worked tirelessly in ETH’s Student Project House, a creative melting pot for innovative projects. They built initial prototypes, experimented with different fluids, and refined the control of complex fluid dynamics. Their first major breakthrough came when they caught the attention of SPRIN-D, Germany’s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation.
In December 2022, Unbound Potential was selected as one of six teams for the prestigious Long-Duration Energy Storage Challenge and received funding of one million euros. This non-dilutive capital was a crucial vote of confidence and gave the young company the necessary boost to intensify its research. A year later, in December 2023, the next milestone followed: Unbound Potential reached the second stage of the challenge and secured an additional three million euros, earmarked for building a first pilot plant.
These successes didn’t go unnoticed. The startup went through renowned Swiss funding programs like Innosuisse and the Migros Pioneer Fund. However, the real test was yet to come: the search for venture capital. In September 2025, the team achieved a coup that caused a stir in the European startup scene: Unbound Potential closed a pre-seed financing round of €14.4 million. Led by renowned investors like Founderful and Kvanted, this round underscored the market’s immense confidence in the technology and the company’s vision.
The Reward: Partnerships with Giants
With capital backing them, Unbound Potential could initiate the next phase and engage with potential application partners, most notably with the global technology giant Amazon. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Accelerator, Unbound Potential was selected in 2024 to further explore the application of their storage solution for decarbonmizing Amazon’s energy-intensive logistics business.
For Amazon, storing excess solar power presents a major challenge in decarbonizing round-the-clock operations. Unbound Potential’s long-lasting, safe, scalable and cost-effective battery could be the perfect solution here. “A pilot with a global player like Amazon is a key element in our roadmap towards industrial scale storage,” declared David Taylor. The partnership catapulted the Zurich startup onto the global stage and validated the market potential of its innovation. In parallel, the company is advancing construction of a first pilot plant at its home base in Thalwil. This facility will serve as crucial proof of the technology’s scalability and reliability, paving the way for future large-scale projects.
The Technology: Simplicity Through Innovation
The core innovation lies in eliminating the ion-exchange membrane typically found in redox flow batteries by using immiscible (non-mixing) electrolytes. According to SPRIND documentation, this approach addresses fluid dynamics and liquid interface control challenges in membrane-free systems. The technology development involved collaboration with researchers from Madrid’s IMDEA Energy Institute.
“We just reached out to the research group in Madrid, asked if we could visit, and they said yes. We spent a full day there, looking at the lab, learning about the technology, and understanding how and why they built it.,” Taylor explains. “And it was quite cool, because they never perceived it as scalable. Back then, they just wanted to show that the idea could work in principle, but they weren’t sure it could ever be scaled – mostly because of the fluid–fluid interface control problem. We were able to show that this is actually one of the main issues we’re able to solve.
The Vision: A Future with Unleashed Energy
The technology of Unbound Potential is more than just a better battery. It’s a promise. The promise that the availability of renewable energy no longer needs to depend on nature’s whims. The promise that excess solar and wind power can be stored and used exactly when needed – day and night, in any weather.
David Taylor’s journey, which began on a lonely pilgrimage route, has led him to the forefront of the energy transition. He and his team have dared to question and rethink one of the most fundamental components of battery technology. Their success is proof of the power of vision, persistence, and belief in one’s own strength – that self-confidence Taylor found on his long walk to Spain.
The vision of Unbound Potential is clear and ambitious. As Taylor puts it: “We have the vision of enabling the energy transition, and that never changed. And we’re able to rephrase powerful value propositions because we truly own and believe in our vision.” With each new prototype, each new partnership, and each new success, they come one step closer to this vision. They are in the process of unleashing the potential of renewable energy – and thereby shaping the future of our planet.
The Validation: Real-World Testing
For Taylor and his team, the ultimate validation comes not from laboratory results but from real-world implementation. “I think that the most important validation tool for us is building and building a pilot project together with industrial implementation partners that help us understand the framework we fit. We need to fit in in terms of regulation, specifications, and so on. And that basically gives us a clear understanding of the actual cost of what we’re building and the actual value it delivers,” he explains.
This philosophy drives their approach to business development. “A clear ambition to implement working systems as early as possible. It’s exactly the same idea as with the experiments. You should try every idea you have as practically as you can. The same goes for the product. You should go out early with a clear hypothesis. So, does this actually generate the value for the customer in the way we expect? Is the customer willing to pay what we anticipate, and so on?,” Taylor elaborates.
The company’s commitment to practical validation reflects Taylor’s broader philosophy about entrepreneurship and impact. ” I really felt the urge to invest my time – the time I spent at work during the day, away from my family – into something that truly creates value, impact, and meaning for me and for the people I care about. That’s basically how I decided to embark on this startup journey,” he reflects.