Rice Alliance Energy Venture Day 2023 selects eight ‘most promising’ companies

After 42 pitches and more than 300 meetings, investors and energy corporations have selected the eight “Most Promising Companies” at the 2023 Rice Alliance Energy Venture Day.

The yearly event hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which took place March 7 at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, brings together new energy companies with venture capitalists, corporate innovation groups, industry leaders, academics and service providers.

The 53 energy ventures participating in this year’s event come from across the country and have already raised a combined total of $257 million in funding. Prior to the companies pitching their businesses and technologies in front of attendees, they were matched with investors for one-on-one meetings.

The eight “most promising” are:

• Group1, the world's first engineered materials company focused on Potassium-ion batteries, continuing the lineage of innovation from the co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery and 2019 Nobel laureate, Professor John Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin.
• Pressure Corp, which develops systems that transform pipeline waste pressure into clean energy with zero impact on customer budgets.
• Columbia Power Technologies (C-Power), which harnesses the power of the world’s biggest and best battery — the ocean — to cost-effectively and reliably solve some of the world’s biggest energy and operational problems.
• H Quest Vanguard, which has developed an electrically-powered chemical conversion platform that allows customers to use low-cost hydrogen to decarbonize without major capital expenditures or hazardous hydrogen transportation.
• Ionada Carbon Solutions, which has developed a patented, scalable hollow fiber membrane contactors carbon dioxide-capture solution optimized for small- to mid-sized emitters. 
• STARS Technology, an original equipment manufacturer of microchannel process technology ("chemical process chips") and energy/chemical systems based on microchannel process technology (e.g., hydrogen generators).
• EarthEn, which develops flexible storage and artificial intelligence technologies to optimize the grid and enable renewable energy 24/7 for a carbon-free Earth.
• AeroShield Materials, which manufactures the world's most thermally insulating transparent materials for energy-efficient windows, freezers and more.