Cleantech Open Northeast / NECEC

🎉 Alumni of the Month: Active Surfaces and AeroShield Materials 🎉 It's been an exciting summer for Cleantech Open Northeast alumnni! In August, we are once again delighted to have a double Alumni of the Month award: Active Surfaces (2023) and Aeroshield (2019). These companies are both making remarkable progress in their respective industries, setting high standards for innovation and influence. 🚀 Active Surfaces 🚀 Active Surfaces is commercializing an ultra thin-film solar technology based on decades of MIT research. Their technology provides thin-film solar panels for commercial warehousing applications, which can unlock terawatts of dual land use next generation deployment. This month, Active Surfaces raised $5.6 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round led by Safar Partners. They also expanded their offices to a 4,800-square-foot facility in Woburn, Massachusetts. Visit Active Surfaces at https://lnkd.in/gakjQkFu 🚀 Aeroshield 🚀 AeroShield is a material science company that has developed and scaled the world’s most transparent silica aerogels. Founded by one of the inventors of the material and spun out of MIT, AeroShield’s mission is to make our lives more sustainable and comfortable. Aeroshield has opened a new 12,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Waltham, Massachusetts! The facility will enable AeroShield to scale its production of transparent aerogel materials and will also serve as its R&D headquarters. The funding will support expanding the team to over 30 employees. Aeroshield was also awarded $14.5 million from ARPA-E's SCALEUP program to scale the manufacturing of its transparent aerogel materials for energy-efficient windows. This funding will help AeroShield develop a pilot manufacturing facility in collaboration with commercialization partners. To learn more, visit https://lnkd.in/dFdgnytm In the Cleantech Open Accelerator, AeroShield was the 2019 National Grand Prize Winner, and Active Surfaces was the 2023 National Grand Prize Runner Up. Both companies are led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology alums and they are both members of Greentown Labs in Somerville! Congratulations to both Active Surfaces for their recent accomplishments. Your dedication to innovation and sustainability continues be a model of climate action & innovation! #ctoalumnisuccess #alumniofthemonth

🎉 UPCOMING EVENT! 🎉 Startup Community Celebration at Fidelity Investments HQ Boston: Please join on September 4th to celebrate all of the exciting work going on in our community! We’re inviting our most engaged founder/investor/community friends, so you’ll meet & hear from folks with a lot of shared interests! Register here: https://lnkd.in/gsBis2xb

Calling all business sustainability-minded undergraduates! We are looking for a fall innovation intern to join our Cleantech Open Northeast / NECEC team! This is a wonderful opportunity to interact with cleantech startups, mentors and various other stakeholders in the climate field. “The innovation intern position is such a good introduction to all of the different sectors within Cleantech, you build great connections.“ - Sierra Moll, Summer Innovation Intern, 2023 “My experience at Cleantech Open Northeast definitely helped hone my programmatic and organizational skills, while also learning about cutting Cleantech innovation and working directly with entrepreneurs and other partners. “ - Kristen Chen, 2021 If you are a Massachusetts student interested in working with us this fall, please check out our job description and apply! https://lnkd.in/eV-DDZMM

Interns are absolutely critical to the work that we here at Cleantech Open Northeast / NECEC do to support current and alumni startups, our mentor community, and work with our partner organizations and sponsors. In 2024, we have seen some incredible innovation and leadership from Spring Program Coordinator Avani Prakash and Summer Innovation Intern Sherry Tao. Avani began with our team in January as a co-op from Northeastern University, where she is a rising junior. She quickly took charge as an event manager for our numerous in-person Northeast Kickoff events from Maine to Washington D.C. and led us into the application period where she helped formulate our 2024 Cleantech Open Northeast Startup Cohort! In May and June she was a primary organizer of our multi-day National Academy East event in New York City with the incoming cohort, mentors and facilitators, and speaker presentations and workshops. The baton was then passed to Sherry, a rising senior at Columbia University. Sherry got her start just before the Academy and steadily took on increasingly ambitious projects throughout the summer that made a positive impact on our organization. Sherry authored our weekly digests for the mentor and startup cohorts during the curriculum and conducted interviews with past interns to spotlight the available opportunities post-Cleantech Open Northeast. She is currently completing a large-scale data analysis project and will be presenting to our team before her departure. All of this is possible through the programs run by MassCEC Internships and Northeastern University. We are so grateful to have such a vibrant student and service provider community to aid our work uplifting the next generation of cleantech startups! OPEN POSITION! If you are an undergraduate college student with creative, innovative and administrative skills and are interested in working closely with early-stage cleantech startups, we are currently hiring for our Fall Innovation Internship! Join the NECEC Innovation Team and be part of real change and a robust network. Learn about the position and how to apply here: https://lnkd.in/eg_pvm_2 #internhighlight #cleantechinnovation #climatetech #northeast Beth Zonis Olivia LaRoche Alistair Pim Magdalena Wilk

🚀 Check out so many amazing alumni news from Cleantech Open Northeast this week! AeroShield Materials secured another $5M funding, and opened a new manufacturing facility in Waltham, MA: https://lnkd.in/eu9XkBbW Multiple alumni and current cohort startups secured InnovateMass grants from MassCEC: https://lnkd.in/eMwMA2zc Embue - $334,640 florrent - $244,916 Matcha - $335,000 SuryaTech- $91,000 Adept Materials was admitted into the Third Derivatives 24-2 cohort. https://lnkd.in/ec_eUNuz Learn about their technology in this TechCrunch article. https://lnkd.in/eUXCt5YQ Thiozen Inc. secured $3.2 million funding from Emission Reduction Alberta and Alberta Innovates. https://lnkd.in/emih23yY They also joined Greentown Labs Houston. https://lnkd.in/eU3Ke5JD Osmoses was nominated for World Materials Forum Start Up Challange. https://lnkd.in/eTTDpgQb EcoForge was featured in a Boston Globe article. https://lnkd.in/e_Ha4Rhv florrent secured $3.6 million in seed funding led by MassVentures. https://lnkd.in/ezD77Fmy Check out our full list of Alumni news 2024 here: https://lnkd.in/e9NDwPBs

Congratulations to the florrent team on achieving this fabulous accomplishment! Can't wait to see what you achieve next!

We are excited to congratulate DetoXyFi for being featured in the latest article by SeaAhead! This article highlights DetoXyFi's cutting-edge technology for removing toxic pollutants from water, showcasing their mission to protect and preserve our natural resources. Check out the article to learn more about how DetoXyFi is making waves in the Cleantech industry. https://lnkd.in/eHVp_PRP

Congratulations to WeNeW Carbology, LLC and Capro-X Inc. for each receiving a $206k grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's SBIR/STTR program through the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)! Congratulations to both teams for their outstanding achievements and commitment to advancing sustainable energy solutions. 🌱🔬🚀 #ctoalumnisuccess https://lnkd.in/eMcXPYQR

🎉 Congratulations to Derek LaClair from EMPEQ for being named one of Central New York Business Journal's 40 Under Forty Award recipients! https://lnkd.in/dU4Et_Cq

Huge congratulations to SolaBlock on being awarded a $200k+ grant from the Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative(M2I2)! 🌱🔋 #ctoalumnisuccess https://lnkd.in/gBFmDVBa