Verge Motorcycles & Donut Lab

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I think we need a bit of collective intelligence here, as some of these claims are quite outrageous—to the point that if they were true, Finland’s economic problems would be wiped away forever as if by magic. From my own real-world experience (my work involves chemical batteries, and half my relatives are M.Sc. Engineers): the more of an engineer someone is, the more skeptical they are of these claims.

Someone discovers or notices something that others haven’t and brings it to the discussion, which is the whole point of this forum. People look at things from different perspectives, which is only an asset.

Perhaps the moderators could separate the motorcycle company into its own thread, where the discussion would focus strictly on that company? And then put the donut power source speculations into their own.

In my opinion, the discussion here has been civil, with good points being made on both sides.

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It could be that the whole thing is a total scam, but if the goal were only to collect reservation fees for some mysterious reason, why is the delivery date for the bike already promised for January 2026? Wouldn’t there be potential to collect thousands of reservations and set the delivery date to, say, January 2027… however, if something is sold and actually delivered to the customer, the technical specs can’t just say anything, even from a consumer protection standpoint. That’s why I believe there is some kind of solid-state setup in that bike; it is then a different matter how it holds up during riding or works in practice.

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The impact on Finland might be quite limited (the first subcontracting factory) if the HQ is in Estonia and there is a ”nearly empty” holding company as the owner in Finland.

Perhaps in an Exit, something bigger would be realized here (assuming that the owners are mostly in Finland).

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For instance, because people are more eager to make reservation payments. I couldn’t find a clear deadline for reservation fee refunds on the company’s website at a glance, and I believe this is intentional. They can probably sit on them for months.

I’ve also been thinking about the reputation issue discussed here. The business world is full of tricksters who manage to dupe people over and over again, even when their reputation for previous scams is known. Even finance professionals invested in WinCapita… Just a while ago, Donut’s CEO was trying to milk money for an AI project that included completely outrageous promises, but maybe this time everything is different!

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Verge’s business has no value. This startup has sold perhaps a dozen bikes in its history, whereas the value of this battery invention with the alleged specs is in the hundreds of billions and would immediately bring a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a completely new, unknown battery chemistry. Just having a realistic development plan for such a product, even if nothing was ready, would easily enable raising billions in funding.

The situation is analogous to a Finnish heat pump company inventing cold fusion but refusing to sell it to large utility companies because they want to use it in their own products first. The more you look at this, the more it starts to look like a marketing campaign for Verge, as they have managed to draw all the attention to a completely secondary motorcycle product that is going on sale. Any publicity is good for a consumer firm if the alternative is going bankrupt.

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You’ve piqued my interest. Financial data for Verge Motorcycles starting from 2022 can be found on the Estonian inforegister.ee service at the link below. I downloaded the 2024 financial statement and ChatGPT translated it into Finnish, a couple of screenshots of which are below (2024 sales figures and income statement). If the pricing has been similar to what it is now and the revenue came from motorcycles, then 8 bikes were sold to Germany, 13 to Finland, and one each to France and Spain. I’m attaching the 2024 Estonian-language financial statement to this post; feel free to examine it further yourselves. There are many people here more qualified than me to dig out the essential facts and conclusions.

The income statement, then, makes for rather grim reading. Losses of 10.7 million on sales of one million. The site shows a revenue forecast for 2025 of approx. 1.3 MEUR, and losses will likely be in the same range as in 2024. Phew. Against this backdrop, it’s understandable that they absolutely must sell significantly more of those bikes and quickly → Donut to the rescue.

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https://www.inforegister.ee/en/16535648-VERGE-MOTORCYCLES-OU/#:~:text=Table_title:%20Quarterly%20indicators%20info%20Table_content:%20header:%20|,productivity:%20–%20|%20Labour%20productivity:%20–%20|

Verge_Motorcycles_OU-aruanne_2024.pdf (121.3 Kt)

So yes, it is possible that this CES announcement is purely a rescue operation for Verge, but if the range specs don’t hold up, it probably won’t go very far, because if the battery doesn’t perform, will this publicity save the bike brand? It could even tarnish it quite badly, due to that family connection with the CEOs. A drowning man will grasp at any straw, of course, and the CEO of Donut is the brother of Verge’s CEO. Blood is thicker than water. :man_shrugging:

To add to this, according to Verge’s promotional video, they also have battery and Donut motor deliveries to Watt Electric, Cova, Esox, and a few others. I don’t know the first thing about their quantities or value, so I can’t assess their significance. At least Lehtimäki has said that they will deliver to everyone who wants them, as long as production allows.

In this light, I certainly understand that scaling would surely happen much faster under the wing of someone like Toyota or VAG, as they would get plenty of funding from the customer to build factories. However, there’s the detail that a big corporation would probably want a large slice of the company to guarantee control over their investment and assurance that everything goes according to their needs. In other words, it would be like walking into the “Shark Tank”, where you could lose the shirt off your back if you’re not careful.

Perhaps the owners of Donut Lab are not ready to dilute their stake just to get the company growing faster. Or then it’s a big scam, as these things often tend to be. The wait will be a long one. :sweat_smile:

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There are quite a few open questions regarding the technology itself, but also concerning the ownership of the companies. This article briefly scratched the surface of the ownership structure of the Estonia-registered Donut Lab OÜ:

According to the Estonian trade register data, Donut Holding Oy’s ownership of Donut Lab is 50%, and the other half is owned by Donut Group Oy, whose sole board member is Marko Lehtimäki and deputy member is Ville Piippo.

Donut Holding Oy currently has a change notification pending in the trade register; I would estimate it relates to a share capital increase. Several previous decisions have already granted options/special rights, which will cause the number of shares to more than double from the current amount.

In my view, this is a pure cash-out round, but the final outcome will become clear in time. Fortunately, one could say that retail investors won’t get their fingers burnt here, unless they choose to pursue their dreams through Springvest. Based on this information, Springvest’s ownership of Donut Lab is not even the previously stated 0.6%.

E: Donut Lab’s information can be found here:

The company’s board and other responsible persons:

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Ownership:

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In turn, Donut Group’s board can be found in the Finnish trade register:

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As well as Donut Holding’s board, which also includes Siilasmaa:

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Thus, Siilasmaa has no direct connection to the operations of Donut Lab, which seem to be run in a very high-flying manner by Lehtimäki and Piippo.

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If there is even a small chance that the invention could be even partially real, then wouldn’t almost all companies involved in the EV business be practically forced to buy such a motorcycle so the battery can be examined. Deliveries are delayed to get enough customers in the queue, then everything is sent at once. Those who take the risk and dismantle the battery won’t be able to return the product. For some companies, that €40k is such small change anyway that they won’t bother returning it regardless.

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If it’s a world-changing product, why mess around with these total startups? They sound like very questionable companies anyway. For example, Esox has two vehicles on offer that are entirely at the concept level:

Oruga

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HyperQ

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Go check out Oruga’s Instagram account and consider whether this is a serious defense industry company.

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Esox at least is Lehtimäki’s and Piippo’s own drone company, founded last year.

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Both overpriced IPOs and outright scams are coming. I place Donut Lab, which drove its wagons into the CES electronics trade show this week, in the “Outright scams” category.

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Wikipedia’s ”Big Lie”. Also found in the playbook of Trump and Russia.

The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book My Struggle (Mein Kampf, 1925). The technique is based on the idea that a lie large enough would not be questioned because people would not believe that anyone would dare to lie so outrageously. Repeated enough, the big lie would be accepted as the common truth.[4]

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So, is the global situation such that no company has managed to produce any solid-state batteries at all, or have they succeeded but the batteries aren’t powerful enough or suitable for mass production?

So, at what stage are QuantumScape, Ensurge Micropower ASA, ProLogium, Solid Power, CATL, Gotion, or even Toyota and Samsung in their solid-state battery projects?

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Yes. If we’re talking about all-solid-state electrolyte batteries. These semi-solids already exist.

Toyota might be the closest, with a commercial launch either next year or the year after. Lately, that timeline hasn’t shifted much.

Edit: that semi-solid is expensive to manufacture and not particularly much better compared to current ones. Slightly better energy density.

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I don’t have any competence to evaluate battery technology, so I decided, just for the hell of it, to see what kind of first impression I’d get of the CEO. I opened YouTube and searched for the CEO’s name. The result was some podcast where the CEO is wearing a Louis Vuitton logo cap. That same logo is popular among roadmen, “get rich quick” course sellers, and even Oma Sp’s Pasi Turtio. As a result of this extremely superficial 15-second quick analysis, I’ve decided to watch the story unfold from the sidelines. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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That ownership structure is indeed really complex, and I wondered about it a bit over in the coffee room (Kahvihuone) as well. Demergers have been carried out in both Finland and Estonia. You would almost need to draw the whole cluster of companies into a diagram to get a better understanding. There are subsidiaries across Europe and one in the United States as well. These are under the Estonian bike manufacturer Verge Motorcycles OÜ. That Donut Lab subsidiary setup seems to be a bit more complicated.

Information is quite openly available to everyone in the Estonian business register. A section in the demerger documents of the Estonian Verge Motorcycles OÜ, which deals with the business components being transferred to Donut Lab Development OÜ, is interesting.

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It appears quite clearly from that excerpt in the image that the business section being transferred to Donut Lab Development OÜ is specifically the one concerning the cooperation with Nordic Nano Group, namely battery related work products.

Referring to the message written earlier, a strategic investment by Donut Lab into NNG was announced in the summer of 2025. However, now after this CES trade show event, there has been some back-pedaling regarding this matter for some reason, especially after NNG’s still non-operational Imatra production facility was revealed. Lehtimäki has, for instance, denied that their batteries are manufactured in Imatra. Also, in an interview given to The Verge, Lehtimäki directly denies that NNG’s technology was even used in the project to begin with.

The facts in the demerger documents of that Estonian company regarding this cooperation still strongly suggest that the battery technology is from NNG—a conclusion that could have been reached earlier by combining publicly available information, even though the matter has since been denied. Well, I suppose it’s still possible to some extent that production is elsewhere, but regarding the technology, the connection seems almost certain.

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I also came across Factorial Energy online, which isn’t on the stock exchange yet, though. Mercedes has a prototype car with their battery, and it has gone 1200km on a single charge.

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Regarding the article, it intends to list on Nasdaq via a SPAC this year. According to them, the commercial battery would be ready in 2027, and being partnered with automakers would provide a natural distribution channel.

Instead, it works with automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Hyundai. These partnerships give Factorial access to real-world testing and eventual commercialization. The company’s batteries can store more energy than conventional lithium-ion cells. They weigh less, charge faster, and promise longer driving ranges.

Factorial plans go public through a SPAC merger with Cartesian Growth Corporation III next year. This approach avoids some of the regulatory and cost hurdles of a traditional IPO. The deal values Factorial at roughly $1.1 billion and positions it for rapid growth in the coming years. The company is expected to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker FAC around mid-2026.

Even if Donut’s product were real, if they intend to keep manufacturing 100% in their own hands rather than licensing the technology to other players, scaling it will inevitably be much slower, and there will be room for other players in the field in the future, even if they enter the market with real products with a few years’ delay. Whoever is the first mover in that race will certainly get a Nobel, fame, and glory, but winners are made through commercialization, as long as the product is good enough.

This is turning into the same kind of hype frenzy as hydrogen cars 4-5 years ago and AI over the last couple of years. Has Gartner finally fallen behind the times? :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-09-10-gartner-unveils-top-emerging-technologies-to-support-autonomous-business?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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It’s not going public and raising funds just yet.

If they try to list before they manage to deliver the “samples”, it would raise great suspicion, because after deliveries and proven performance, the company’s value will be tenfold.

If it’s a scam, Risto Siilasmaa’s reputation (and money) is gone..

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Yeah, I went to the battery trade fair in Germany last summer to listen to this presentation, and I’ve posted about it in the Mercedes group on the forum. Still, I think Toyota is further ahead.

Factorial had scaling issues last summer, and they talked about it in their presentation. They were the level of problems that make me doubt they’ll make it before Toyota.

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