Engine Ventures

Great news for Form Energy today. The company announced today their $405M Series F that will enable them to accelerate and scale up manufacturing their multi-day, iron-air batteries, which is critical for the electrification of the grid. Engine Ventures is proud to be an early supporter and investor in Form Energy. Form has achieved remarkable growth over the past six years, pioneering and commercializing a new class of cost-effective, multi-day rust-powered energy storage systems, and working towards deploying their first commercial project in the coming year. https://lnkd.in/e55Z37Rv?

Engine Ventures General Partner Michael Kearney and Principal Lisa Hansmann share why clean energy is the key to winning the future of AI. Their piece in MIT Technology Review highlights the opportunity to scale the next generation of clean energy technologies to meet AI’s significant demand for concentrated and consistent power. As the geopolitical competition for the future of AI heats up, the US is going to need access to a lot more electric power to serve data centers if we want to win this race. https://lnkd.in/e3XtzGpZ?

Congratulations to Blue Energy on its $45 million Series A. Originating from MIT’s nuclear science and engineering department, Blue Energy is making clean, reliable nuclear power commercially viable through innovative, modular, reactor-agnostic power plant architecture designed for the next generation of nuclear reactors. By radically rethinking existing plant architectures, they are reducing build times and costs, making nuclear power competitive with fossil fuels and renewables.

Today Emvolon announced $10.5 million in funding and a collaboration with Montauk Renewables, Inc., a leader in renewable energy development. Emvolon and Montauk will launch a pilot leveraging Emvolon’s patented technology in a commercial-scale demonstration of recovering and converting biogas from a landfill into green methanol at Montauk’s gas production site in Texas. Congratulations to Emvolon on this exciting momentum. https://lnkd.in/eRSiTxVm

Yesterday, Reed Sturtevant, General Partner at Engine Ventures, hosted a panel at #EmTechMIT, MIT Technology Review’s flagship event on emerging technologies. The conversation, “Lessons Learned from Tough Tech,” included Nabiha Saklayen CEO & Co-Founder of Cellino, Francesco Maria Benedetti CEO & Co-Founder of Osmoses, and Adam Slavney CEO & Co-Founder of Pascal. Together, the group discussed the ideation process that brings long-term Tough Tech ventures to market as economically and efficiently as possible.

Sublime Systems announced a $75M investment from two of the biggest cement producers, Holcim and CRH. The investment includes the purchase of green cement from Sublime’s pilot facilities and an agreement to work with the company on additional plant sites. These investments, in addition to the $87M investment from the DOE Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations announced earlier this year, show the building momentum for Sublime's technology as a drop-in replacement for ordinary portland cement. Congratulations to the team! https://lnkd.in/ejqenpcT

Congratulations to HyperLight on its $37M series B. With evolving communication demands, there is an increasing need to develop smaller, more accessible modulators that can democratize the capabilities of lithium niobate, making it available beyond major telecommunications installations. HyperLight has done just that. https://lnkd.in/em-xaDWT

This week, Forbes released its inaugural Sustainability Leaders List, including Boston Metal’s Tadeu Carneiro and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Yet-Ming Chiang. Congratulations. Forbes sat down with Chiang, discussing his impressive career as a professor, researcher and entrepreneur, co-founding 10 startups including Form Energy, Sublime Systems, and others. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/g6qcm8AA?

Engine Ventures’ Lisa Hansmann and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Brian Deese propose a bold national framework that harnesses AI’s growing energy demand to accelerate the scaling of clean energy. As demand for AI proliferates, its energy consumption is crashing headlong into existing energy infrastructure. An AI additionality requirement for new clean energy capacity to meet new computing demand, paired with a fast-tracked approval process for those clean energy projects, ensures the expansion of AI and clean energy go hand in hand. Read Hansmann and Deese’s article in Heatmap News outlining how a national framework can ensure that we scale innovation in AI and clean energy in tandem to build U.S. strength in the sectors critical to winning the 21st century. https://lnkd.in/eXm6tcux

This week, Silicon Valley Bank and Congruent Ventures released their 50 by 2050: Pioneers in Carbon Reduction list. The list - including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Form Energy, VEIR, Boston Metal, and AtmosZero - features climate tech companies creating carbon reduction solutions to enable a net zero future. Congratulations.