#FaradayPathways Sanzhar Taizhan, TaiSan Energy

Sanzhar Taizhan’s inspiring journey has led him from high school in Kazakhstan, to studying automotive engineering at the University of Warwick, to founding his own company, TaiSan Energy and being awarded a Faraday Institution’s Entrepreneurial Fellowship. He shares with us what energises him about entrepreneurship, the value of going the extra mile and making the most out of the opportunities available.

At the age of just 26, Sanzhar has accomplished more than many do in their lifetimes. He has solo-founded his own battery company, presented his work to the President, Prime Minister and Minister of Transport of Kazakhstan, been named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, and recently spoke of his new battery startup with the President of France Emmanuel Macron, and Her Royal Highness Princess Anne.

Early years and passion for entrepreneurship

Sanzhar dreamed from a young age of starting his own automotive company. At three years old he knew the names of all the parts of a car, and at five he knew that the name of his future company would be TaiSan. Sanzhar grew up in Kazakhstan, but his parents dreamed that he would be educated in the UK. They sent him to the UK for summer schools and A-levels.

His family are hugely important to him and have been a big inspiration.

“My family are everything to me. Without them I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere close to where I am today. My ultimate goal is to make my parents proud.”

From a young age, Sanzhar demonstrated a strong entrepreneurial spirit. When he was 16 he sold flowers, ran a tutoring company that taught maths and physics to younger children, and ran a drone movie-making service for weddings. He also organised chess competitions, and was chess champion of Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, in 2006.

What energises Sanzhar about being an entrepreneur?

“I really want to solve problems and understand how I can contribute to the world and leave a mark, all while doing what I love.”

Alongside his passion for entrepreneurship, growing up Sanzhar loved mathematics and physics.

“My father told me that to be successful as an entrepreneur you should know how everything works in your company. You need to be an expert in the field to do something really big.”

Sanzhar never thought he could combine science and engineering with entrepreneurship, but after reading Elon Musk’s book he realised that this was possible. When Elon launched the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition in 2015 Sanzhar was very keen to enter, but was too young. He remained unperturbed, and in those 2 years he travelled to Las Vegas and Boston to meet companies working in the Hyperloop industry.

Undergraduate and internship experiences

In 2017, Sanzhar got accepted into the University of Warwick to study automotive engineering. Within two hours of receiving his admission letter, he emailed over 30 academics in the university to set up a Hyperloop team! At this point, there were no English Hyperloop teams. Sanzhar had to educate everyone on what the technology was, and faced a lot barriers, demonstrating resilience along the way. He explains:

“I like criticism. It doesn’t break me down; it makes me want to try harder. I want to prove the people who don’t believe in me wrong. I don’t let this stop me.”

Sanzhar’s team competed in the 2019 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, which had the goal of designing and building the fastest hyperloop capsule for the SpaceX test track. He managed and led a team of 80 engineers that came 35^th out of 1,600 teams. Following on from this success, they entered the SpaceX-The Boring Company “Not-a-Boring” Competition, which took place in Las Vegas in 2021, and in Austin Texas in 2023, and they reached the finals both times, coming 4^th and 3^rd respectively. Throughout 2017-2022, Sanzhar raised £300,000 of funding from various corporate companies for the competition teams including Bechtel (USA’s largest construction company), BAM Nuttall (one of Europe’s largest construction companies) and the High Volume Manufacturing Catapult.

Batteries aren’t usually the main focus of a degree in automotive engineering. However, in the first year Sanzhar happened to be assigned Professor Emma Kendrick as his personal tutor. Emma specialises in battery research and is a co-investigator on multiple Faraday Institution projects. Additionally, while contacting academics to set up his Hyperloop team, Sanzhar was introduced to Dhammika Widanage, then an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick who encouraged Sanzhar to apply for a Faraday Undergraduate Summer Experience (FUSE) internship at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG).

Sanzhar completed the internship in 2018, for which his research poster was given the ‘Best Innovation Award’. This experience allowed him to gain a technical understanding of lithium-ion batteries, along with hands-on experience in the battery labs, where he learnt how to assemble and disassemble battery cells. Dhammika also inspired him to use machine learning combined with electrochemistry to carry out battery tests. This experience provided a strong foundation in the field of batteries and was pivotal in his career.

“The FUSE internship was a unique experience that you can’t get anywhere else. I got to solve real problems, while interacting with academics and gaining entrepreneurship skills. For me it was so much more than an internship; it opened the doors for a successful life and achieving my dreams.

“Being involved with the Faraday Institution is an absolute privilege. Whenever I talk to European or American partners, everyone knows the Faraday Institution, and my links with it help to demonstrate credibility.”

One of Sanzhar’s main role models was Professor Peter Littlewood, the founding Chair of the Faraday Institution. They met several times in-person and he always took the time to offer Sanzhar advice and mentorship.

The FUSE internship led him to focus his final undergraduate year dissertation on solid-state batteries that involved electrochemical battery modelling for an automotive company. In 2020, he won the IMechE Award for ‘Best Project’ for his dissertation.

Looking back through the early stages of his career, Sanzhar reflects that one of the main contributors to his success is from putting in more work than what is required and making the most out of the opportunities available. This was highlighted in the determination and drive he displayed when securing his internship at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).

During his FUSE internship Sanzhar introduced himself to researchers at JLR who worked in the same building. He asked if there was anything they needed help with. This introduction led to him going through the selection process for a JLR placement – and a 3-month placement on their Advanced Battery Research Team the following summer. There, he helped to develop a new technique that could improve EV range, created an accurate and dynamic parameterisation method for circuit models, and got an insight into the battery industry.

“Everything that I learnt during this placement helped me to start TaiSan. For example, I learnt how to evaluate battery suppliers. It helped me build my network – people that I am still in touch with and who still informally advise me today.”

Setting up TaiSan

After completing his undergraduate degree in 2022, Sanzhar received a Start-Up Graduate Visa for one year and then was accepted into the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship, where he received the long-term Global Talent Visa. From this he secured an Entrepreneurship Visa, allowing him to fulfill his childhood dream and start his own company, TaiSan Energy. The company aims to develop high energy dense quasi-solid-state sodium-ion batteries. They have applied for two patents on proprietary electrolytes and sodium metal anodes.

In order to secure grants for his company, Sanzhar needed to produce prototypes. To finance this he took a contract working on battery cell modelling at Vertical Aerospace – an opportunity that arose through his network at Jaguar Land Rover.

In the three years since founding TaiSan, the company has received £400,000 in grants including the Innovate UK Faraday Battery Challenge Investment Readiness Programme, two Catapult Connected Places Programmes: (Transport Research and Innovation Grants (TRIG) and the Clean Futures Accelerator) and the Impulse Programme at the Maxwell Centre, University of Cambridge. At the end of the TRIG programme, in October 2023 he was recognised with the award of “Best Growth Potential” by Professor Sarah Sharples (Chief Scientific Advisor at DfT).

The company now employs three engineers. Its latest grant is a Faraday Institution Entrepreneurial Fellowship, which will help advance product development, building pouch cells. These will be used in licensing discussions with OEMs.

“This entrepreneurial fellowship is a great accelerator for our business that will enable us to take our project to the next level, allowing us to hire two more engineers. I really want to scale our battery technology and get the big automotive OEMs to work with us.

“It is great for me to tell investors that I did an internship with the Faraday Institution six years ago and that I am involved with them again today. They can see the logic in my career.”

Sanzhar is passionate about sharing his career journey with his home country. He recently did an YouTube interview with Forbes 30 under 30 and it received over 100,000 views. He cultivates social media accounts, with a total of 35,000 followers, and his posts often make it into local newspapers in Kazakhstan.

“There aren’t many people in Kazakhstan who go into technical fields like chemistry or engineering. I want to inspire future engineers in my nation and show that it is possible to succeed.

“I feel so lucky to be working in the UK battery ecosystem. People are so friendly, and you are valued for your work more than where you come from. Everything is very fair, which I greatly appreciate. I am excited about the future of UK battery technology.”

Find out more about the Faraday Institution Undergraduate Summer Internship Scheme.

Written by Science Communications Intern Nancy Stitt and published in May 2024.