Activate Fellow News: September 2026
September 30, 2026
September was a landmark month for Activate Fellows. Across the community, Activate Fellows brought new technologies online, secured major federal awards and investments, formed strategic partnerships, and shared their work on global stages. Here's a roundup of what they achieved:
MAJOR FELLOW MILESTONES
- Coflux Purification (Alec Ajnsztajn, Cohort 2024) deployed its first field test at the U.S. Department of the Interior's Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamagordo, NM.
- Fervo Energy (Tim Latimer & Jack Norbeck, Cohort 2018) announced First Power at Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah, the first utility-scale enhanced geothermal project in the world to reach this milestone.
- Astral Materials’ (Jessica Frick & Jiya Janowitz, Cohort 2025) proprietary crystal growth technique has been deemed Awardable in Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Expedited Research Innovation System (ERIS) Marketplace. Their solution is now active and visible for U.S. Department of Defense customers.
- Tensora (Rob Moak, Cohort 2022) officially launched Tensora Coastal, a new division of Tensora built to give coastal resilience planning the ground-truth subsidence data it's been missing, with Activate Fellow alum Brenna Boehman (Cohort 2024) leading the initiative as director.
- Mach Electric (Spencer Dansereau, Cohort 2026) opened a new facility for manufacturing, R&D, and engineering design in Louisville, CO.
FELLOW FUNDING
- Juno Propulsion (Alexis Harroun, Cohort 2023) has been awarded a $1.2M Phase II SBIR award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) through America’s Seed Fund for the development of Juno’s Production Development Unit.
- Ultropia (Amy Jean Swanson, Cohort 2026) has been awarded a $1.2M Phase II SBIR grant from the NSF for development and commercialization of a modular ultrasound transducer array drying system.
- Robigo (Andee Wallace, Cohort 2022) has raised a Series A funding round to commercialize engineered microbial biopesticides.
- RETRN (Chris Thomas, Cohort 2025) has received a U.S. Department of Agriculture Phase II SBIR award to scale biomanufacturing and bring its barrier coatings to new packaging applications.
- Lightfinder (Diana Mojahed, Cohort 2025) has been awarded a $1.25M SBIR Phase II grant from NSF to accelerate its chip-scale spectrometer technology toward commercialization.
- Nitricity (Jay Schwalbe & Josh McEnaney, Cohort 2020) has been awarded a $5M grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
- Rapid Radicals (Paige Peters, Cohort 2024) has been awarded a $690K SBIR Phase II from the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.
- OneFiltr (Xingyu Du, Cohort 2026) has been selected as one of the first companies to receive investment from Penn’s new StartUP Fund to take its continuously tunable RF filter technology from the lab to the market.
FELLOW PARTNERSHIPS
- Antora Energy (Andrew Ponec & Justin Briggs, Cohort 2018, David Bierman, Cohort 2017) announced a strategic collaboration with GrafTech to develop and supply carbon-based materials for Antora's thermal batteries, strengthening the domestic manufacturing base for American energy technology.
- Osmoses (Francesco Benedetti & Holden Lai, Cohort 2021) and SiTration (Brendan Smith, Cohort 2020) joined Halliburton Labs to accelerate commercialization and industrial scale-up.
- Pulsenics (Essam Elsahwi & Mariam Awara, Cohort 2022) announced a partnership with Kendel to launch a performance diagnostics program built for Chile's industrial electrochemical market.
- Fervo Energy (Tim Latimer & Jack Norbeck, Cohort 2018) announced a 396-megawatt power purchase agreement with Google to enable the continued development of the Cape Station enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) GeoCluster, expected to come online in 2028.
FELLOW AWARDS
- Antora Energy (Andrew Ponec & Justin Briggs, Cohort 2018, David Bierman, Cohort 2017), Nitricity (Jay Schwalbe & Josh McEnaney, Cohort 2020), and Zanskar (Joel Edwards & Carl Hoiland, Cohort 2020) were recognized on the 2026 50 Companies Powering Tomorrow list by Congruent Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank.
- Fervo Energy (Tim Latimer & Jack Norbeck, Cohort 2018) and Zanskar (Joel Edwards & Carl Hoiland, Cohort 2020) were selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Geothermal to run field-scale EGS tests and exploration drilling for new geothermal resources.
- RETRN (Chris Thomas, Cohort 2025) has been accepted into the 2026 Strauch Cleantech to Market Program at UC Berkeley Haas.
- PAGE Technologies (Elliot Strand & Payton Goodrich, Cohort 2025) is joining Breakthrough Energy Fellows Cohort 6.
- Oleo (Gabi Dweck & Kelly Redmond, Cohort 2024) was selected as the Industrial Decarbonization category winner at the 2026 Energytech Cypher Pilotathon and Startup Showcase, held at POST Houston during Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week.
- Hitesh Manglani (Supercarb, Cohort 2024), Margaret Lumley (Roca Water, Cohort 2022), and Kevin Kung (Thakachar, Cohort 2018) were among 12 Changemakers selected for Walking Softer’s fourth cohort of Young Leaders.
- Jinyoung Seo (Pascal, Cohort 2023) and Mo Alkhadra (Lithios, Cohort 2022) were selected for MIT Technology Review's 2026 35 Innovators Under 35 List.
- Vellex Computing (Palak Jain, Cohort 2023) has been selected for the Deep SAGE 2026 cohort, one of 11 startups chosen worldwide to participate in an accelerator built by BLOCK71 Singapore in collaboration with TISI Inc. and NUS Enterprise.
- Solidec (Ryan DuChanois & Yang Xia, Cohort 2024) won second place at the Greentown Climatetech Summit’s Evening Pitch Competition, earning a $5K prize from Foley Hoag LLP.
- BioWraptor (Maeva Coste, Cohort 2025) won the CFF Greenlight Award during Climate Week NYC, including a $10K Climate Solution Prize at The Live Edit: Startups x Storytellers during the Narrative Change Summit.
FELLOW FEATURES
- Andee Wallace (Robigo, Cohort 2022) was featured in an MIT News article, “Giving farmers a more sustainable way to protect crops.”
- SiTration (Brendan Smith, Cohort 2020) was featured in the Boston Business Journal and Washington Post Intelligence.
- Drūl (Brent Ifemembi & Nelson Ndahiro, Cohort 2024) was featured in the CareQuest Innovation Partners 2026 Oral Health Innovation Market Map.
- Tandem PV (Colin Bailie & Chris Eberspacher, Cohort 2016) was featured in the Heatmap News article, “Perovskite Solar Is Having Another Moment.”
- Electrified Thermal Solutions (Dan Stack & Joey Kabel, Cohort 2021) was featured in Canary Media for its deployment of two of its heat batteries at a facility run by Holcim. The company was also highlighted in the article by pv magazine, “Storing renewables with firebrick thermal batteries.”
- Anthro Energy (David Mackanic, Cohort 2021) was featured in the Forbes article, “A Silicon Valley Startup Aims To Fill A Battery Supply Chain Gap.”
- Vycarb (Garrett Boudinot, Cohort 2022) was featured in the CleanTechnica article, “Vycarb Successfully Stores Low-Purity CO2 In Seawater.”
- Coastal Assembly (Walt Zesk, Cohort 2026) was featured in The New York Times article, “Rising Seas Are Gobbling Up Beaches Around the World. A.I. Might Restore Them.”
FELLOW PUBLICATIONS & APPEARANCES
- Antonio Baclig (Inlyte Energy, Cohort 2021) was featured on The Just Energy Transition Podcast and the Battery + Storage Podcast.
- David Mackanic (Anthro Energy, Cohort 2021) spoke on the Green Giants: Titans of Clean Energy Podcast.
- Poolad Imany (Icarus Quantum, Cohort 2024) spoke on the Disruption/Interruption podcast about the importance of modularization for quantum systems.
- Ronald Davis (VectorWave, Cohort 2025) was featured on Amelia’s Weekly Fish Fry electronic engineering podcast.
- Pulsenics (Essam Elsahwi & Mariam Awara, Cohort 2022) co-published a paper in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy on the demonstration of predictive operando DRT insights.
- PumpKin (Justin Silpe, Cohort 2024) published a paper in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, “Nurturing people and planet: the role of breastfeeding in climate mitigation and adaptation.”
- Newfound Materials (Matt McDermott, Cohort 2024) co-published a peer-reviewed paper with Colorado State University in Inorganic Chemistry.
- Tim Latimer (Fervo Energy, Cohort 2018) spoke on stage at The New York Times' Climate Forward event at Climate Week NYC.
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