Engine Ventures
Canvas Category Consultancy : Company : Venture Capital
Engine Ventures invests in the next generation of Tough Tech founders: providing capital, operational expertise, and a powerful academic, commercial, and governmental network to build and scale companies unlocking massive opportunities in climate change, human health, and advanced systems.
Assembly Line
T-robotics Secures $5.4M Seed Funding and Applies AI to How Industrial Robots Understand, Learn, and Adapt to Complex Manufacturing Environments
T-robotics, a developer of programming for any robot using natural language and skill models with no code required, announced it has raised a $5.4 million Seed round, co-led by Emergent Ventures and Engine Ventures with Berkeley Skydeck and Raisewell participating. T-robotics will use the fresh capital to expand its U.S. and E.U. operations. Additionally, the company was selected as one of just two winners, from among a group of more than 100 global applicants, in the ABB AI Startup Challenge.
T-robotics’s software, ActGPT, is robot-agnostic and integrates with a variety of commercial robotic solutions, such as robotic arms or mobile robots, and leverages multi-modal data streams from vision, haptics, and language inputs to empower robots with enhanced problem-solving capabilities.
Blue Energy Secures $45M to Make Clean, Reliable Nuclear Power Commercially Viable
Blue Energy, a nuclear power plant company, emerged from stealth with a $45 million Series A fundraise co-led by Engine Ventures and At One Ventures, with investment from Angular Ventures, Tamarack Global, Propeller Ventures, Starlight Ventures, and Nucleation Capital. Blue Energy also introduced its modular nuclear power plant that can be centrally manufactured in existing shipyards. Shipyard manufacturing reduces the cost and build time of deploying nuclear power safely, making nuclear power economically competitive with fossil fuels and renewables. The funding will be used to advance Blue Energy’s core engineering work and site development, and secure additional partners.
The AI datacenter and manufacturing boom has emphasized the demand for reliable, clean electricity in the U.S. and the world. To decarbonize and grow electricity production while maintaining energy affordability and security, the global energy generation mix must include more nuclear power. However, new nuclear plant construction projects face multi-year delays and exorbitant costs. While there have been exciting advancements in nuclear reactor technology, reactors make up less than 10% of the cost of nuclear power plants; over 90% of the cost comes from construction and regulatory challenges in the rest of the plant. Blue Energy’s innovation is a modular, reactor-agnostic power plant architecture to house the next generation of nuclear reactors. Blue Energy’s power plants use centralized shipyard manufacturing to dramatically reduce the capital costs from $10K/kW to $2K/kW and shrink build times from 10 years to 2 years.
Sora Fuel Secures $6M to Produce Atmospherically-Sourced Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Sora Fuel, a startup producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using only water, air and renewable energy, announced it has raised an oversubscribed $6 million seed round. The Engine Ventures led the round, with Wireframe Ventures and others participating. The funding will be used to expand Sora Fuel’s Boston-based team, develop commercialization partnerships and further advance the company’s novel technology.
Pascal Raises $8M to Solve the HVAC Industry’s Climate Problem
Pascal, a startup developing high-efficiency climate-friendly heat pumps, air conditioners and refrigerators based on solid refrigerants, introduced its novel technology and announced it has raised an $8 million seed round led by Engine Ventures, with Khosla Ventures and previous investor Blindspot Ventures participating. The funding will be used to productize Pascal’s low pressure, solid refrigerant-based system, conforming to commercial HVAC specifications. The company will also use the capital to expand its Boston-based team of mechanical engineers, chemists, and material scientists.
Pascal’s novel class of solid refrigerants operate at lower pressures than previously possible and can be used across a range of HVAC applications, including heat pumps, air conditioners, refrigerators and freezers. The company believes its systems can be manufactured within the existing industrial ecosystem, using off-the-shelf parts from the conventional HVAC component supply chain. Companies operating in the commercial refrigeration supply chain, and any organization with heating and cooling needs across distributed locations can benefit from Pascal’s technology.
Terragia Secures $6M to Develop Cost-Competitive, Low-Carbon Biofuel Technology
Terragia Biofuel, a technology startup aiming to drive the next generation of biofuels, announced it has raised a $6 million seed round led by Engine Ventures and Energy Impact Partners (EIP). The company will use the capital to commercialize its novel biology-based approach to converting cellulosic biomass into ethanol and other products, expand its employee headcount and initiate partnerships with major biofuel producers.
Terragia uses engineered thermophilic bacteria to break down cellulosic biomass and convert it into ethanol and other chemical products. The company’s technology avoids key features responsible for the high cost of conventional cellulosic biofuel production by one-step “consolidated” bioprocessing without added enzymes, and leveraging mechanical disruption during fermentation (i.e., “cotreatment”) in lieu of thermochemical pretreatment.
In partnership with Dartmouth College and the University of Campinas, the ongoing development of Terragia’s technology is supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Center for Bioenergy Innovation and the São Paulo Research Foundation, by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Science Foundation, as well as private capital.
EVOLOH Secures $20M to Transform Electrolyzer Manufacturing and Make Low-Carbon Hydrogen Globally Accessible
EVOLOH, Inc., a cleantech company that manufactures electrolyzer stacks for hydrogen production, announced it has raised an oversubscribed $20 million Series A round led by Engine Ventures. Additional participating investors include a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources and 3M Ventures. The capital will be used to expand the company’s scalable, high-throughput manufacturing technology and introduce additional capabilities for its NautilusTM platform of advanced liquid alkaline electrolyzers.
EVOLOH is making low-carbon hydrogen globally accessible by revolutionizing the manufacturing of electrolyzers. While incumbent electrolyzers are notoriously expensive and difficult to produce, transport and install, and rely on politically and environmentally challenging supply chains, EVOLOH’s manufacturing facility will offer an 80% reduction in capital investment and footprint.
Electrolyzer stacks, the core component of electrolyzers, are offered via EVOLOH’s NautilusTM platform and made from abundant materials like steel, plastic and aluminum and do not require precious metals or rare earth materials. To reduce the CAPEX and OPEX of hydrogen plants using EVOLOH’s Advanced Liquid Alkaline technology, the NautilusTM stacks use low-cost power electronics and do not require corrosive electrolytes. EVOLOH’s NautilusTM stacks are very compact, and can be built into modules of 24 megawatts, making them ideal for large industrial applications.
AtmosZero Closes $21 Million in Series A
AtmosZero, the company on a mission to decarbonize steam, announced the close of a $21 million Series A round co-led by Engine Ventures and 2150 to accelerate the commercialization of its Boiler 2.0 technology. Constellation Technology Ventures, the strategic venture arm of Constellation Energy Corporation (Nasdaq: CEG), also joined the round along with existing backers, Energy Impact Partners, Starlight Ventures, and AENU.
Industrial steam, which is used across the built environment and industries from food and beverage to chemical manufacturing, is generated by burning fossil fuels onsite in boiler systems that account for nearly eight percent of global primary energy use. AtmosZero’s proprietary Boiler 2.0 technology extracts heat from the air and delivers high-temperature steam with maximum efficiency and zero carbon emissions, allowing companies to replace their existing natural gas and oil boilers quickly and cost-effectively.