E6: Vivas Kumar: Building Mitra Chem & Securing America's Energy Supply Chain

I sat down with Vivas Kumar, founder & CEO of Mitra Chem, a company commercializing iron-based cathode battery materials. They have raised $100M in equity but more interestingly they have secured $150M+ in grants from the Department of Energy and the state of Michigan. Backers include bestie Chamath Palihapitiya (who personally led the $20M Series A), and Mitra Chem is now building America’s first large-scale iron-based cathode factory.

Born in India, and an immigrant twice over, first to Singapore, then to the US, Vivas talks openly about how the survival instincts of immigration hardwire the founder’s mindset. Before founding Mitra Chem, he spent years at Tesla, where he signed the company’s first-ever 10-year lithium supply contracts (previous industry record: 3 months), jetting across 50 countries and 250+ days a year on the road. He was Tesla’s #2 travel spender after Elon Musk. Those deals are still the backbone of Tesla’s supply chain today.

Vivas took an education leave from Tesla to attend Stanford Business School (MBA). During this time, Tesla’s stock price skyrocketed 25x, and the unvested equity he would have resumed vesting into was worth millions. Returning to Tesla would have meant near-guaranteed financial security, what he called “generational wealth.”

But he made what he calls a “supreme decision” to walk away, one of many such supreme decisions at critical moments that have contributed to Mitra Chem’s rise. Instead of cashing in millions, he chose to found Mitra Chem, betting that solving the US battery supply chain problem was a billion-dollar opportunity and a chance to create thousands of jobs.

Some of what we cover:

* The Immigrant Mindset as Superpower - Why code-switching across cultures made him a sharper CEO and why immigration hardwires founders for survival.

* Supreme Decisions - Choosing Chamath over every other VC, leaving millions in unvested Tesla stock on the table to chase billions, and carrying lessons from a family chemicals business older than independent India.

* Fundraising at Scale - What it takes to raise $100M+ in venture capital and secure $150M+ in U.S. government grants and why being backed by the DOE is the toughest diligence process a startup will ever face.

* Tesla Lessons - From signing decade-long lithium supply contracts to watching Elon Musk make existential calls that kept Tesla alive when it had only weeks of cash left

* Building Mitra Chem - At the intersection of electrification, AI, and deglobalization. From a garage in Palo Alto to becoming a flagship U.S. battery champion competing with China.

* Cultural Compounding - Why small, high-trust teams work best, how equity becomes religion in Silicon Valley, and why the American Dream remains the world’s strongest brand.

Timestamps:

00:00 -Intro

00:46 -Transformational experiences and Immigrant story

08:41 - An Amalgamated American experience

15:46 - What is MitraChem and the Founding moment

17:44 - Asian business mindset

22:41 - Making “Supreme Decisions”

24:41 - Meeting Chamath Palihapitiya

25:40 - Early Tesla Employee experience

30:01 - Leaving Millions on the table

33:35 - Long Term Battery Contracts

37:40 - The Stanford Business School brand

41:22 - The birth of MitraChem

56:01 - Entrepreneurial journey post marriage

58:46 - Metrics for a successful life

1:05:37 - Lessons in fundraising

1:19:14 - Evaluating Agency

1:22:48 - The art of a good deal

1:25:01 - Raising money from the Government

1:34:19 - Future Predictions

Watch on YouTube here:

Also available on X, Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Last Episode:

I saw down with another former Elon employee, Karan Talati who was early at SpaceX and built their entire manufacturing supply chain processes. He shares his insights from working at the company when they were blowing up rockets every other week and what he learnt from the culture of extreme ownership.

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