We’ve just announced the Regional Winners and Runner Ups from the West, Southeast, Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and South Central regions. In 2020, since the entire accelerator was conducted online due to the pandemic, we combined the competition of companies across these regions. 

Kudos to the 48 companies that competed and thank you to the 41 judges who reviewed and scored both the companies’ 8 Essential Business Deliverables written work as well as their live pitches.

These companies will now compete for the U.S. National Prize on October 20 and 21st.

The Regional Winners from the CTO Northeast region will be announced on October 1st.

Each year, the start-ups in the current accelerator cohort compete for a spot in the National Finals, and eventually to present and win the U.S. National Prize at Cleantech Open’s Global Forum. 

This year, the event will be held virtually on October 23 - all are welcome to attend for free: 

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR THE CTO GLOBAL FORUM HERE.

We’d like to thank our sponsors and our volunteers, especially our generalist and specialist mentors, for their time and effort in guiding the companies through this year’s accelerator program and providing valuable feedback.

8 Regional Winners:

Aeromutable

Aeromutable is bringing aerospace technology into the trucking industry. We are focused on the design and manufacture of aerodynamic modification systems that increase vehicle efficiency and safety.

Sector: Energy Efficiency

Chicago, IL and San Diego, CA

Antora Energy, Inc.

Antora Energy is building a low-cost thermal battery for grid-scale energy storage.

Sector: Energy Distribution & Storage

Fremont, CA

Community Energy Labs

Community Energy Labs provides a simple, affordable way for building owners to build and operate all-electric, grid-interactive, low-carbon buildings without sacrificing occupant comfort.

Sector: Green Buildings

Portland, OR

Coreshell Technologies, Inc.

Coreshell Technologies is accelerating the transition to electric transportation and renewable energy by solving the key degradation issue in all rechargeable batteries with our nanolayer thin-film coating.

Sector: Energy Distribution & Storage

Berkeley, CA

Ocean Motion Technologies

Ocean Motion Technologies is fabricating the world’s first adaptive ocean wave energy device controlled by an advanced artificial intelligence.

Sector: Energy Generation

San Diego, CA

Summit Nanotech

Summit Nanotech has created a lithium mining process that will isolate lithium ions from solution, doubling yield, using no freshwater, and creating less waste.

Sector: Energy Distribution & Storage

Calgary, AB, Canada

Takachar

For crop/forest residues (biomass), we create small-scale, low-cost, portable equipment latched onto the back of tractors and pick-up trucks to deploy to hard-to-access areas to locally convert residues into useful products before transportation.

Sector: Energy Generation

City & State: Berkeley, CA

Uplift Solar

Our novel technology makes solar panels 'smart', lowers upfront cost, and increases efficiency for all solar markets. Current finalist in the DOE-sponsored AmericanMadeChallenge solar price for the commercialization of promising technologies.

Sector: Energy Generation

Las Vegas, NV

4 Regional Runner Ups:

EnZinc Inc.

Working with the US Naval Research Laboratory, EnZinc has developed a battery using the common material zinc that has the energy of Li-ion, is as cheap as lead-acid, but is safer than both.

Sector: Energy Distribution & Storage

Richmond, CA

Icarus RT

Icarus is developing a hybrid photovoltaic/thermal plus storage technology to extract waste heat from PV panels in commercial and utility-scale arrays, store heat energy, and convert the stored energy into power using the Organic Rankine Cycle.

Sector: Energy Generation

San Diego, CA

BlueDot Photonics

Our power-boosting solar glass increases the power output of a solar panel by up to 16% and decreases panel costs by 10%. And it does not change today’s panel assembly process. Our printable solar module technology makes flexible solar devices that can be 50% lower cost than today’s panels.

Sector: Chemicals & Advanced Materials

Seattle, WA

Proof Energy

Proof Energy is developing fuel cell power modules for cost-effective clean stationary power generation and medium/heavy-duty transportation applications, building on breakthrough metal-supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) and exclusively licensed by Proof Energy.

Sector: Energy Generation

Dublin, CA

Congratulations to the teams!