Forge Nano Breaks Ground on Morrisville Battery Plant Expansion, Citing More Than 250 Planned Jobs

A Building Triples in Size, and So Do the Job Numbers

On August 19, 2026, officials gathered in Morrisville, North Carolina, to break ground on an expansion of Forge Nano's lithium-ion battery plant^[1]. Republican Sen. Ted Budd, Democratic Rep. Deborah Ross, Morrisville Mayor TJ Cawley and Energy Department Assistant Secretary Audrey Robertson all showed up^[1]. The company says the project will more than triple a 100,000-square-foot building into a campus of roughly 315,000 square feet^[1]. It expects to create more than 250 jobs, with cell production starting in 2028^[1].

That is the news. But the project itself is not new. Forge Nano first announced this Morrisville plant back in November 2023, standing next to then-Gov. Roy Cooper^[3]. The $100 million federal grant behind Tuesday's groundbreaking was announced in September 2024 and finalized in January 2025^[5][14]. What happened this week is that construction on the expansion actually started.

That gap between announcement and groundbreaking is the first thing worth noticing. Big factory projects often get announced two or three times: once when the deal is signed, once when the money arrives, and once when shovels hit dirt. Each moment generates its own headline. None of them means the plant is finished, and none of the job figures attached to those headlines quite match the others^[1][3][5].

Two Businesses, One Plant, and a Deadline Set by Law

Forge Nano is not one company doing one thing. It sells coating equipment used in chipmaking, and separately it makes battery cells through a unit called Forge Battery^[11]. The building that broke ground this week is the battery side. Understanding why the timing matters means understanding a rule most readers have never heard of.

The National Defense Authorization Act includes provisions that start restricting Chinese-linked battery sourcing for the U.S. military beginning in 2028^[1]. In plain terms: starting that year, the Pentagon and its contractors will be legally barred from buying certain battery cells that rely on Chinese-linked supply chains. Almost all high-performance lithium-ion cells made today come from Asia, mostly China and South Korea[baseline]. So a legal deadline is about to create a buyer who has no choice but to look for cells made outside that supply chain.

Forge Nano timed its production start to that exact year^[1][5]. That is the strength of the plan: a customer who is required by law to buy what you make. It is also the risk, because Congress can move the deadline, and nothing forces it to stay fixed.

Scale matters here too. The new plant will produce about 3 gigawatt-hours of cells a year, or roughly 150 million cells^[1]. A gigawatt-hour is enough battery capacity for about 13,000 to 15,000 typical electric cars. That makes this plant small next to the giant factories that supply the EV market. It is not built to compete on price with Chinese or Korean mass producers. It is built to sell smaller volumes of qualified cells to buyers, mostly in defense and aerospace, who are required to source outside that market^[1][5].

The Grant That Pays Nothing Up Front

North Carolina's part of the deal is a Job Development Investment Grant worth up to $1,525,500 spread over 12 years^[3]. That is not a check the state hands over at the groundbreaking. It is reimbursement, paid only after the state's Commerce and Revenue departments verify that Forge Nano actually hit its hiring and investment targets, set at 204 new jobs and $142 million in investment^[3].

That structure is why supporters and critics can point to the same program and reach different conclusions. Supporters, including officials from both parties, say it protects taxpayers: if the jobs never show up, the state pays less or nothing^[3]. Critics say the structure doesn't stop the announcement itself from creating a jobs figure that later turns out to be wrong^[9].

The free-market John Locke Foundation, through its outlet Carolina Journal, has tracked that gap closely. It reports North Carolina canceled six similar grants in recent years, and that from 2003 through 2025 almost half of all such agreements failed to hit their job targets^[9]. Its broader figure, drawn from research spanning two state programs launched in 1993 and 2002, puts total jobs promised at 204,000 against about 95,000 actually delivered^[10]. That figure covers three decades of deals, not this one specifically, which makes it a fair read of the program's track record and an imprecise stand-in for any single project^[10].

Who Wants What, and Why

Forge Nano's case is straightforward: no single company can build a defense-grade domestic battery supply chain without help, and its Atomic Armor coating technology, applying layers a few atoms thick to battery materials, is what lets it do this at a smaller scale than a typical gigafactory^[11]. The company is also mid-process on a SPAC merger valuing it at $1.2 billion, set to list on Nasdaq as NANO^[11]. A groundbreaking with a senator, a congresswoman and a federal official is a credibility marker for investors watching that listing close.

The bipartisan turnout is its own story. Republican Sens. Budd and Thom Tillis pushed the Energy Department to fund the project, while Democratic Rep. Ross was the one who announced the award^[4]. National security is one of the few frames that plays well for politicians of both parties at once, which helps explain why a 2023 project keeps generating fresh press events.

Samsung SDI's involvement gets less attention in U.S. coverage than it does in Korean trade press. The company invested about $20 million in Forge Nano and signed a conditional agreement to buy cells from the Morrisville plant starting in 2028^[7]. South Korean outlet The Elec reported the deal plainly: it lets Samsung SDI sell cells made on U.S. soil, inside American tariff walls and inside the coming rules meant to strip Chinese material from the defense supply chain^[7]. Bloomberg's framing leaned toward the money side, describing Samsung as reaching for U.S. defense funding^[8]. Both are legitimate reads of the same arrangement; U.S. coverage of the groundbreaking largely left Samsung's angle out.

How the Coverage Split

The company's own release, distributed through GlobeNewswire, called the plant "America's Battery Gigafactory," a slogan that sits oddly next to a facility a fraction of the size of major EV battery plants^[1]. WRAL's local coverage led with "Chipmaker's RTP-area expansion," which mislabels the news since the building that broke ground makes batteries, not chips, and stated the national-security benefit as settled fact in its headline rather than attributing it^[2].

CleanTechnica credited the $100 million to "Trump Admin" funding, even though the award was announced in September 2024 and finalized in January 2025, under the Biden-era Bipartisan Infrastructure Law^[5][6][14]. That framing turns a disbursement into an origin story. Carolina Journal, meanwhile, has not covered this groundbreaking directly, but its adjacent coverage of canceled grants runs far more often than its coverage of successful ones, which shapes what its readers see about the program's overall track record^[9][10].

What Happens Between Now and 2028

Nothing that comes out of the Morrisville plant will be sold before 2028^[1]. Between now and then sit a SPAC closing, roughly two years of equipment installation, a hiring ramp toward whichever job number ends up being the real one, and a defense sourcing rule that hasn't taken effect yet^[1][11]. Every job figure attached to this story, 250, 280, 204, comes from a different document written at a different time, and they don't match^[1][3][5].

What no one disputes is the condition driving all of it: almost all high-performance lithium-ion battery cells sold today are made outside the United States[baseline]. Whether this plant, this grant and this legal deadline change that by 2028 is not yet something anyone can verify. For now, what exists is a bigger building, a signed grant that pays only on results, and a calendar everyone involved is watching.