Houston-based Flathead Forge Fund 1 has invested in Houston startup Solidec, which specializes in modular onsite chemical manufacturing.
The investment was part of Solidec’s recent round of more than $2 million in pre-seed funding. The amount of Flathead Forge’s investment wasn’t disclosed.
“Flathead Forge brings exactly the kind of domain-specific capital and operational network that a company at our stage needs. Their focus on water and critical minerals makes this a genuinely strategic relationship,” Ryan DuChanois, co-founder and CEO of Solidec, said in a news release.
Other investors in the round included New Climate Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Echo River Capital, Ecosphere Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Safar Partners and Semilla Climate Capital.
Solidec produces industrial chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, formic acid and acetic acid, using only air, water and electricity. Its modular reactors eliminate the need for energy-intensive production and long-haul distribution.
“Solidec’s platform cuts cost, emissions, and supply-chain fragility at the source,” Douglas Lee, managing director of Flathead Forge, added in the statement.
DuChanois said in an email that the company plans to use the funding to "scale (its) modular chemical manufacturing platform."
Solidec recently announced a pilot project with Lynas Rare Earths, the world’s only commercial producer of separated light and heavy rare earth oxides outside China, for production of hydrogen peroxide for a Lynas facility in Australia.
Solidec, a member of Greentown Labs Houston, spun out of associate professor Haotian Wang’s lab at Rice University in 2024. Wang focuses on developing new materials and technology for energy and environmental uses, such as energy storage and green synthesis.