Investors from Houston and Boston fuel Greentown with $4M commitment

next era

A mix of public and private investors have funded Greentown Labs. Photo via GreentownLabs.com

Greentown Labs, a climatetech incubator with locations in the Houston and Boston areas, has announced it has received funding from a mix of investors.

The $4 million in funding came from both of the Houston and Massachusetts locations. Houston investors included Bobby Tudor, CEO of Artemis Energy Partners and chairman of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative; David Baldwin, co-founder of OpenMinds and TEX-E and partner at SCF Partners; and Rice University. Other investors included MassDevelopment and the City of Somerville.

“The challenges of the energy transition are immense, and the role played by technology incubators like Greentown Labs is essential,” Tudor says in a news release. “We believe this role, which is a partnership between academia, industry, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and governments, is the best way to get to effective, scalable solutions in a time frame that the urgency of the challenge requires. We need all hands on deck, and this partnership between Massachusetts and Texas can be a role model for others.”

According to Greentown, the funding will support its financial position and contribute to preparing the incubator for its next chapter of supporting its its leadership team prepare for Greentown’s next chapter supporting and growing its 575 startups.

“Greentown’s mission aligns closely with the Houston Energy Transition Initiative’s goal of accelerating global solutions to address the dual challenge of meeting growing energy demand globally while also significantly reducing CO2 emissions,” adds Steve Kean, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership.

With the announcement of the funding, Greentown named its board members, including Tudor, who will serve as Greentown Labs Board Chair. The other Houston-based board members are:

David Baldwin, co-founder of OpenMinds and TEX-E; partner atSCF Partners
Bob Harvey, former president and CEO of GHP; board member of TEX-E
Jane Stricker, senior vice president of energy transition and executive director of HETI

“With this new funding, Greentown is poised to expand its impact across its existing ecosystems and support even more climatetech startups,” adds Kevin Dutt, interim CEO of Greentown Labs. “We believe in the essential role entrepreneurship will play in the energy transition and we’re grateful for the support of our partners who share in that belief and our collective commitment to commercializing these technologies as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

According to Greentown, the incubator plans to announce its new CEO in the coming months.

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The GHP and HETI announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Argonne National Laboratory, a a federally-funded research and development facility in Illinois. Photo via Getty Images

HETI to partner with national research organization to promote energy transition innovation in Houston

team work

A new partnership between the Greater Houston Partnership and Argonne National Laboratory has been established to spur development of commercial-scale energy transition solutions.

The GHP and the Houston Energy Transition Initiative, or HETI, announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Argonne National Laboratory, a federally-funded research and development facility in Illinois. The lab is owned by the United States Department of Energy and run by UChicago Argonne LLC of the University of Chicago.

“The U.S. Department of Energy’s national laboratories have long been the backbone of research, development, and demonstration for the energy sector," Bobby Tudor, CEO of Artemis Energy Partners and Chair of HETI, says in a news release. "The Partnership and HETI, working with our industry members, business community and top research and academic institutions, in collaboration with Argonne, will work across our energy innovation ecosystem to drive this critical effort for our region.”

The partnership, announced at HETI House at CERAWeek by S&P Global, is intended to provide resources and collaboration opportunities between Houston's energy innovation ecosystem — from corporates to startups — to "accelerate the translation, evaluation and pre-commercialization of breakthrough carbon reduction technologies," per the news release.

“A decarbonization center of excellence in Houston is the missing link in the region’s coordinated approach to advancing critical energy transition technologies needed to mitigate the risks associated with climate change, while also promoting economic growth and job creation for the region,” Tudor continues.

Established in 1946, Argonne works with universities, industry, and other national laboratories on large, collaborative projects that are expected to make a big impact on the energy transition.

“Partnerships are essential to realizing net zero goals,” Argonne Director Paul Kearns adds. “We are pleased to extend DOE national laboratory expertise and work with HETI to focus the region’s considerable energy and industrial assets, infrastructure, and talent on broad commercial deployment of needed technologies.”

An Austin-based energy software company just scored funding from Houston investors. Photo via Getty Images

Houston VCs back energy software startup in $3.25M seed round

fresh funding

Houston-based investment firm Goose Capital led a $3.25 million round of seed funding revealed recently by Austin-based cleantech software company P6 Technologies.

Other participants in the round are Houston-based investment firms Artemis Energy Partners, Tupper Lake Partners, and Veritec Ventures. The seed round represents the first outside funding for P6, which maintains an office in Houston.

In conjunction with the seed funding:

Artemis founder and CEO Bobby Tudor has joined P6’s board of directors. He is an investor in Goose Capital.
Paal Kibsgaard, managing partner of Veritec, also has joined the P6 board. Kibsgaard is former chairman and CEO of Houston-based oilfield services company Schlumberger, which now does business as SLB.

Joe Berti, CEO of P6, says Kibsgaard’s “unparalleled experience” will benefit his company.

“Veritec’s strategic vision and active support of energy transition solutions align perfectly with our goals, and I am confident their contribution will be instrumental in shaping our future success,” Berti says in a news release.

Berti is former chief product officer of IBM’s sustainability software unit.

P6, founded in 2022, sells enterprise software to businesses in the energy, transportation fuel, and petrochemical sectors. The startup’s software for product lifecycle assessment enables measurement of the product-level intensity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as energy companies try to achieve sustainability goals.

Tudor applauds P6 for helping fossil fuel-anchored companies reduce GHG emissions.

“Energy is the sector that needs a solution like P6 the most,” says Tudor. “P6 has the right approach and is going to make a step-change improvement to how product-level carbon intensity and GHG emissions are tracked today.”

Bobby Tudor has joined the board of an energy tech company. Photo via Houston.org

Houston energy transition leader joins California company's board with investment

seat at the table

A Houston business leader has taken a seat at the table of a San Francisco-based tech company.

Puloli, an IoT solutions-as-a-service company has announced an investment from, Artemis Energy Partners, a Houston group founded by Bobby Tudor. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With the transaction, Tudor joins Puloli's board of directors, bringing expertise from a storied career in energy transition from his roles at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. and the Greater Houston Partnership.

"Bobby brings a tremendous amount of credibility and energy industry insight to Puloli and complements what Jodi Jahic and Aligned Partners bring to Puloli," Kethees Ketheesan, CEO of Puloli, says in a news release. "Bobby's endorsement of Puloli solution will be a big boost in accelerating our growth."

The investment from Artemis Energy Partners will be used to support research and development, operations, and more at Puloli, which recently launched a continuous methane monitoring service for energy producers. The funding will also support this new technology, called the Paradigm M-Series, as it rolls out across North America.

"I'm very pleased and excited to be a part of the Puloli team," Tudor says in the release. "The energy industry is hungry for solutions I'm confident Puloli can provide. Kethees and his team are poised to become a leader in the methane detection and measurement space, and I look forward to supporting that growth opportunity."

Tudor was the 2020 chair of the GHP and currently serves as the chairman of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative, or HETI. He founded Artemis Energy Partners in 2017 after his firm TPH merged with Perella Weinberg Partners in 2016.

Students from the 2023 cohort of The Energy Project showcased their innovations at the Puranik Foundation Lotus Innovation Awards. Photo courtesy of Jacob Power Photography

Sustainability-focused philanthropy recognizes student innovations, local leaders

EMPOWERING THE TRANSITION

From the moment of arrival at the Puranik Foundation Lotus Innovation Awards, attendees engaged in an experience that stimulated the senses and excited the mind – a precise reflection of the foundation’s approach to a holistic education for future innovators.

The event, held last week at the Post Oak Hotel in Uptown, honored Houston leaders supporting the next generation of aspiring entrepreneurs and celebrated the dedication of high school students dreaming sustainability solutions into reality.

“[These students] have the potential to reach innovative places that none of us can think of because we are so set in our ways,“ says Bhakti Puranik, executive director of Puranik Foundation, just steps from where the students showcased their prototypes to secure the gala’s Fan Favorite award. “They are open-minded and creative and constantly inspired by the community that surrounds us.”

The Energy Project, launched in 2020 by the foundation, supports young minds tackling environmental challenges for sustainable development across five sectors: alternative power generation, sustainable consumption, waste management, urban design, and water sustainability.

Multiple small student teams from across the country met for design thinking lessons before creating prototypes of their own solutions at TXRX Labs. The foundation’s primary sponsor, Worldwide Oilfield Machine, provided mentors and resources to the 25 students in this year’s cohort alongside Rice University.

For the winning team, Refoam Maine, the application of mushroom mycelium in lieu of plastic for floating buoys came from the optimistic minds of Maggie Blood, Olivia Huard, Tula Bradley Prindiville, and Laura Riordan, students of Camden Hills Regional High School near Rockport, Maine.

A close-knit community, Camden Hills has collectively seen thousands of orphaned buoys pile up against their docks and beaches for years. The team plans to use their Lotus Innovation Award grant of $15,000 to get their floats in the water, and is actively working with boatyards, aquaculture farmers, and others to bring that vision to reality this summer.

Cyrus Golshan, Nathaniel Lemon, and Alexander Kristof took home the Fan Favorite Award for their solution Piezot, which harnesses energy from revolutionary piezoelectric tiles that convert pressure into energy and electricity.

The team studies at the Energy Institute High School in Houston and envisions an energy ecosystem that doesn’t rely so heavily on natural forces, but rather on human movement as a means to generate power. Placement of the tiles in high-traffic areas like airports, schools, and shopping centers could mean an exponential growth in power supply created simply by the many feet that pass through these areas every day.

Bobby Tudor, CEO and founder of Artemis Energy Partners, and recipient of the Sustainability Lotus Award from Puranik Foundation, attributes the success of the program to the convergence of expertise, a collaborative ecosystem, and global connectivity available from Houston as part of the burgeoning Energy Transition industry.

“We are the energy capital of the world because we are the intellectual capital of energy,“ says Tudor. “The knowledge, the engineering, the expertise, sits here in a more concentrated way than it sits anywhere else in the world. It is that intellectual capital that will pave the way for us to continue to be the energy capital of the world a decade from now, two decades from now, and five decades from now.”

Additionally, Paula Harris, senior vice president of the Houston Astros Community Affairs and Executive Director for the Astros Foundation, accepted the Education Lotus Award for her continued commitment to advancing STEM education across underserved communities.

For his positive impact on the mental well-being of students, Bradley H. Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Psychological, Health, and Learning Services at the University of Houston School of Psychology, Puranik Foundation honored him with Mindfulness Lotus Award.

Applications for The Energy Project are due by 1 November each fall. In addition to the team competition, next year’s cohort includes an immersive experience in India for holistic learning and leadership development.

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Houston researchers develop strong biomaterial that could replace plastic

plastic problem

Collaborators from two Houston universities are leading the way in engineering a biomaterial into a scalable, multifunctional material that could potentially replace plastic.

The research was led by Muhammad Maksud Rahman, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Houston and an adjunct assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. The team shared its findings in a study in the journal Nature Communications earlier this month. M.A.S.R. Saadi, a doctoral student in material science and nanoengineering at Rice, served as the first author.

The study introduced a biosynthesis technique that aligns bacterial cellulose fibers in real-time, which resulted in robust biopolymer sheets with “exceptional mechanical properties,” according to the researchers.

Biomaterials typically have weaker mechanical properties than their synthetic counterparts. However, the team was able to develop sheets of material with similar strengths to some metals and glasses. And still, the material was foldable and fully biodegradable.

To achieve this, the team developed a rotational bioreactor and utilized fluid motion to guide the bacteria fibers into a consistent alignment, rather than allowing them to align randomly, as they would in nature.

The process also allowed the team to easily integrate nanoscale additives—like graphene, carbon nanotubes and boron nitride—making the sheets stronger and improving the thermal properties.

“This dynamic biosynthesis approach enables the creation of stronger materials with greater functionality,” Saadi said in a release. “The method allows for the easy integration of various nanoscale additives directly into the bacterial cellulose, making it possible to customize material properties for specific applications.”

Ultimately, the scientists at UH and Rice hope this discovery could be used for the “next disposable water bottle,” which would be made by biodegradable biopolymers in bacterial cellulose, an abundant resource on Earth.

Additionally, the team sees applications for the materials in the packaging, breathable textiles, electronics, food and energy sectors.

“We envision these strong, multifunctional and eco-friendly bacterial cellulose sheets becoming ubiquitous, replacing plastics in various industries and helping mitigate environmental damage,” Rahman said the release.

America's only rare earth producer announces $500M agreement with Apple

Digging In

MP Materials, which runs the only American rare earths mine, announced a new $500 million agreement with tech giant Apple on Tuesday to produce more of the powerful magnets used in iPhones as well as other high-tech products like electric vehicles.

This news comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that the U.S. Defense Department agreed to invest $400 million in shares of the Las Vegas-based company. That will make the government the largest shareholder in MP Materials and help increase magnet production.

Despite their name, the 17 rare earth elements aren’t actually rare, but it’s hard to find them in a high enough concentration to make a mine worth the investment.

They are important ingredients in everything from smartphones and submarines to EVs and fighter jets, and it's those military applications that have made rare earths a key concern in ongoing U.S. trade talks. That's because China dominates the market and imposed new limits on exports after President Donald Trump announced his widespread tariffs. When shipments dried up, the two sides sat down in London.

The agreement with Apple will allow MP Materials to further expand its new factory in Texas to use recycled materials to produce the magnets that make iPhones vibrate. The company expects to start producing magnets for GM's electric vehicles later this year and this agreement will let it start producing magnets for Apple in 2027.

The Apple agreement represents a sliver of the company's pledge to invest $500 billion domestically during the Trump administration. And although the deal will provide a significant boost for MP Materials, the agreement with the Defense Department may be even more meaningful.

Neha Mukherjee, a rare earths analyst with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said in a research note that the Pentagon's 10-year promise to guarantee a minimum price for the key elements of neodymium and praseodymium will guarantee stable revenue for MP Minerals and protect it from potential price cuts by Chinese producers that are subsidized by their government.

“This is the kind of long-term commitment needed to reshape global rare earth supply chains," Mukherjee said.

Trump has made it a priority to try to reduce American reliance on China for rare earths. His administration is both helping MP Materials and trying to encourage the development of new mines that would take years to come to fruition. China has agreed to issue some permits for rare earth exports but not for military uses, and much uncertainty remains about their supply. The fear is that the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies could lead to a critical shortage of rare earth elements that could disrupt production of a variety of products. MP Materials can't satisfy all of the U.S. demand from its Mountain Pass mine in California’s Mojave Desert.

The deals by MP Materials come as Beijing and Washington have agreed to walk back on their non-tariff measures: China is to grant export permits for rare earth magnets to the U.S., and the U.S. is easing export controls on chip design software and jet engines. The truce is intended to ease tensions and prevent any catastrophic fall-off in bilateral relations, but is unlikely to address fundamental differences as both governments take steps to reduce dependency on each other.

Houston energy tech platform Molecule closes series B funding

energy software

Houston-based energy trading risk management (ETRM) software company Molecule has completed a successful series B round for an undisclosed amount, according to a July 16 release from the company.

The raise was led by Sundance Growth, a California-based software growth equity firm.

Sameer Soleja, founder and CEO of Molecule, said in the release that the funding will allow the company to "double down on product innovation, grow our team, and reach even more markets."

Molecule closed a $12 million Series A round in 2021, led by Houston-based Mercury Fund, and has since seen significant growth. The company, which was founded in 2012, has expanded its customer base across the U.S., U.K., Europe, Canada and South America, according to the release.

Additionally, it has launched two new modules of its software platform. Its Hive module, which debuted in 2022, enables clients to manage their energy portfolio and renewable credits together in one scalable platform. It also introduced Elektra, an add-on for the power market to its platform, which allows for complex power market trading.

"Four years ago, we committed to becoming the leading platform for energy trading," Soleja said in the release. "Today, our customers are managing complex power and renewable portfolios across multiple jurisdictions, all within Molecule.”

Molecule is also known for its data-as-a-lake platform, Bigbang, which enables energy ETRM and commodities trading and risk management (CTRM) customers to automatically import trade data from Molecule and then merge it with various sources to conduct queries and analysis.

“Molecule is doing something very few companies in energy tech have done: combining mission-critical depth with cloud-native, scalable technology,” Christian Stewart, Sundance Growth managing director, added in the statement. “Sameer and his team have built a platform that’s not only powerful, but user-friendly—a rare combination in enterprise software. We’re thrilled to partner with Molecule as they continue to grow and transform the energy trading and risk management market.”

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