IONNA is moving faster than its own timeline on charging. In a video with Out of Spec Reviews, IONNA CEO Seth Cutler explained the company's partnership with Circle K, under which IONNA becomes the energy provider and Circle K stays the retail host. The site in the video, off Interstate 95 in North Carolina, went from 180 kW Circle K chargers to 400 kW IONNA hardware in about four days. Cutler says eight converted sites are already live across the US, with roughly a dozen more under construction. IONNA had said the first sites would arrive by the end of 2026. Instead they are landing months early, and the reason is unglamorous. The old Circle K locations were built with enough electrical headroom to make the swap fast.
The detail that makes this work is conduit. According to Cutler, the original Circle K sites were provisioned with four inch conduit, upsized transformers and switch gear, so IONNA can pull new wire and drop in modern hardware without waiting on fresh utility interconnections, the part of charging construction that usually takes the longest. That is the real story. The bottleneck in US fast charging has rarely been the chargers themselves. It has been permitting, grid connections and civil work, exactly the long lead steps Cutler says these ready made sites let IONNA skip. Reusing sites that already cleared those hurdles is a shortcut almost nobody else has at this scale. Circle K brings something else too. Cutler says the chain has close to 9,000 North American locations, and that IONNA is targeting at least 350 of them over the next couple of years, with over half already signed.
The video frames the deal as three things, in Cutler's words: a high quality retail partner, scale, and speed. He says IONNA signed the contract and had its first site live within six to eight weeks, and that crews can now convert one of the existing sites in about four days once everything is staged. The company plans two phases. First, rip and replace on the roughly 80 to 85 existing Circle K charging sites. Then more than 100 newly signed sites that go into permitting later this year for 2027 openings. Cutler says about 70 percent of IONNA's investment is going into cities and 30 percent into highway corridors, that around 30 percent of its deployed sites currently have canopies, and that 500 kW hardware is likely the next step as cars arrive that can use it. The converted Circle K sites, he notes, will not get canopies. Beyond Circle K, Cutler lists Wawa, Sheetz and Casey's among IONNA's retail partners, and says the branded rechargery experience, whether hosted at a partner or built by IONNA, is meant to be about 70 percent of the network, with smaller infill sites making up the rest. The North Carolina location has six 400 kW stalls from three dual port chargers, plus a Tesla supercharger sharing the lot. Cutler adds that some converted sites are coming back online at higher utilization than before they were taken down.
Bottom line: This is the smartest land grab in US charging right now. IONNA did not find a faster way to build stations, it found stations that were already most of the way built and bought the right to finish them. For drivers, the payoff is immediate: familiar Circle K stops with 400 kW plugs and, going by Cutler's comments, better reliability than the hardware they replaced. The open question is whether IONNA can hold the four day pace across hundreds of sites without the amenities slipping. If it can, this partnership quietly reshapes where East Coast road trips stop.
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