big winners
4 student-led sustainability-focused startups scored funding at annual Houston competition
Four student-founded energy and sustainability startups from around the world have something to celebrate — cleaning up at the 24th annual Rice Business Plan Competition.
This year, 42 startups competed this year, participating in the three-day event that culminated in a reception on Saturday, April 6. Over a dozen companies won prizes, and the full recap of those is reported on InnovationMap.
“We award the competitors $1 million in prizes, prizes that serve as foundational capital to launch their startup,” RBPC Director Catherine Santamaria says at the awards gala. “That’s a large number of prizes, but the biggest thing our startups leave with is a feeling of generosity and community from this room. This community is always ready and willing to help our founders and support our vision for the competition by investing time, money and resources in these student innovators.”
The companies were divided into five categories — one of which was Energy, Cleantech and Sustainability. Four companies from that track scored prizes at the reception.
Icorium Engineering Company from the University of Kansas walked away with $171,000. The company — a chemical engineering startup developing technologies to make sustainable, circular economies a reality for refrigerants and other complex chemical mixtures — won fifth place and a $5,000 prize sponsored by Norton Rose Fulbright, EY, Chevron Technology Ventures and Shell Ventures, as well as:
- $100,000 OWL Investment Prizes
- $40,000 nCourage Courageous Women Entrepreneur Investment Prize
- $25,000 from Finger Interests, the Anderson Family Fund at the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Greg Novak and Tracy Druce
- $1,000 Anbarci Family Company Showcase Prize
- Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition Prize (Best in Energy, Sustainability)
- An invitation to Entrepreneur Magazine's elevator pitch show
From RWTH Aachen University in Germany, Power2Polymers secured $50,000. Tackling the challenge of forever chemicals, the company is creating safe alternatives free of forever chemicals. The German company took third place and the $50,000 investment sponsored by Finger Interests, the Anderson Family Fund at the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Greg Novak and Tracy Druce. The company also won the Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition Prize (Best Overall).
Two climatetech companies that didn't make it to the finals still walked away with funding. From Yale University, Oxylus Energy, which has a technology that uses renewable electricity to turn CO2 and water into energy-dense liquid fuels, won the $25,000 New Climate Ventures Sustainable Investment Prize.
LiQuidium, with its sustainable membrane technology for direct lithium extraction process, from the University of Houston also scored $25,000 — this one from NOV Energy Technology Innovation Cash Prize.
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A version of this article ran on InnovationMap.