American Battery Technology said its $115 million Department of Energy award for the first phase of its Tonopah Flats lithium project has been reinstated in full after the company won its appeal of an October 2025 termination notice.
The company said the reinstated grant carries no change to the amount of funding or the technical and commercial milestones, though the project schedule was adjusted to reflect time spent in review. The award supports construction of a commercial-scale refinery initially designed to produce 5,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide per year.
ABTC said it filed its appeal on Oct. 10, 2025, one day after receiving the termination notice on Oct. 9. The company then entered an informal dispute resolution process with the DOE, including technical and commercial reviews that ended with a December 2025 meeting. After that review, the DOE told the company that rescinding the termination and continuing the project was warranted.
The reinstatement comes after ABTC had already completed the first two years of the five-year grant. The Tonopah Flats project was also named in June 2025 as a critical mineral priority project for streamlined federal permitting.
ABTC pointed to a pre-feasibility study published in October 2025 that projected a lifetime after-tax NPV at 8% of $2.57 billion, an internal rate of return of 21.8%, and an estimated production cost of $4,307 per tonne of lithium hydroxide monohydrate. Today the company's shares have moved 19.59% to a price of $3.7193. If you want to know more, read the company's complete 8-K report here.
