Energy Tech Startups

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0:10 path to building a thunder at lizard starts here. Learn more at energytechnexascom. Welcome back to

0:16 the show. Today I'm excited to be back here with a different co-host than we usually have. Jason is out on his way to

0:25 New York for New York Climate Week And so I have with me a friend and colleague, Dev Morturam. Did I say that right? Yeah, you did. Almost. Thank you for being with us, Dev. Dev has a long

0:40 history of working with startups, being in the Houston ecosystem. And so thank you for joining me as a host today. Yeah, thank you for having me. And today I am excited to have with me someone

0:53 who's come here all the way from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tom Chepukovic.

0:60 I think I got that right. He is the founder of Zentos Energy. Thank you for being here. Well, thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, and thank you for being here here for Houston Energy and

1:12 Climate Week. Tell us a little bit about Zentos Energy and how you started the company, what is it about, what's the background here? Sure, Zentos Energy formally flow aluminum we rebranded in

1:24 March. We're developing a safe, resilient and cost efficient aluminum batteries. And so it came together. I was in the battery supply chain, a battery in the semiconductor. And I was working

1:38 with the technology transfer office at University of New Mexico, the NSFI Core program. And I saw my co-founder pitch and win a pitch competition on an aluminum battery using no lithium or cobalt

1:53 that could actually capture carbon. And so as a mentor, I paired with them for 10 weeks. And we developed it and didn't accelerate or right after the REACH program through NREL. And another

2:06 company was trying to swoop in and grab it. So we incorporated in May of 2023.

2:13 And we've been developing since then. So it came out of the NREL labs.

2:20 We worked there, the licensing is through the University of New Mexico. And actually one of my co-founders did a postdoc at MIT where the research began There's a lot of aluminum energy research at

2:30 MIT. She took a professor role at the University of New Mexico, won a6 million grant from the NSF and built her own post-lithium battery lab. And then my other co-founder who's in her PhD program,

2:46 they wrote the patent for the aluminum CO2 battery and the aluminum ion and we're up to 10 patents now, two outside of the university and eight licensed exclusively from the University of New Mexico.

3:02 But this in the context for us a little bit about batteries, you know, usually we hear about lithium batteries, how are aluminum batteries different? What are they going to be used for? What is

3:12 the use case that you're trying to sell them for? Yeah. So aluminum batteries, they use no lithium or cobalt or other, you know, difficult metals. It's an aluminum anode and a carbon fabric

3:23 cathode. And we're actually using urea as the base for the electrolyte now So very different from lithium batteries in our, we're, a longeration energy storage is our beachhead market. The

3:35 aluminum CO2 battery is actually a metal gas battery. So that aluminum anode electrode is in a low pressure cylinder with

3:46 CO2. On the discharge, it's a stripping and plating battery, you're stripping the aluminum and the gas reacts and creates an oxalate and concentrates CO2 And so on recharge, it actually releases

3:59 pure CO2. and we have a partner that can convert that to graphite. Okay, so you're not only using the battery to store energy, but you're also producing CO2. Yeah, yeah, pure CO2. Pure CO2,

4:13 you're like capturing CO2 from the urea. Yes, yeah. It's my understanding. Yeah, what about your efficiencies? Like when you're thinking about lithium versus aluminum? Yeah, so in the

4:27 long-duration storage market, lithium is really a two to three hour, like a Tesla megapax, like a two to three hour battery, and we're an eight to 24 hour. So, on our beach head, we're really

4:38 trying to compliment

4:41 the long-duration energy space. There's not a lot of lithium. So we're trying to compliment that.

4:47 Ulyphium's fast response. So in the energy market, for big disruptions, you need that fast response and we're more a slow discharge kind of base load style battery. Would you add that to like a

4:60 microgrid? What are some of your use cases? Who do you see or some of the customers for this? Yeah, yeah, microgrid is one of our first pilots, New Mexico State University, they're doing a one

5:11 megawatt hour solar microgrid, and we're participating in that. And then we're actually doing an edge data center for the military. We're 100 domestically sourced, which is another big difference

5:23 from lithium, zero foreign supply chain

5:29 And so, yeah, we're going to be doing a lot of work with the military. There are a lot of utilities, you know, with the tariffs, they really want an alternative that's domestically sourced, so.

5:39 Yeah, so

5:41 tell us about, you know, you started the company in 2023. Tell us about the progression of the technology from where you took it at, what was the readiness level, and then where is that today?

5:53 And where do you need to be to actually be able to Get your first commercial project. Sure, so we were at about a TRL technology readiness level two in the spring of 2023. And we've progressed it

6:07 to about a five to six. We just did some testing with San Diego National Lab, had some great results, more on the destructive side. So we heated it up to 125 degrees Celsius and had no degradation

6:21 in performance, which is far superior to lithium. I think there's some special lithium batteries, but they're not rechargeable when we are And Sandy is going to take it up to 200, and we'll see

6:31 what happens there. And they did a nail penetration test, and there was no flame or no thermal runaway. So very, very safe battery. It actually kept running with a nail through it. So it's very

6:43 durable. Yeah. What's your, you mentioned data centers. Like I think this week during Houston Climate Energy Week, that was like, probably if we're playing bingo, you know, probably said a

6:53 thousand times between AI and data centers. Like you mentioned like beachhead markets, that's gonna be in terms of your percentage going forward and how do you think you're gonna be able to scale up

7:05 to meet those demands? Yeah, so I think it's probably gonna be half and half data center and utility scale farms, green development. We're working with EPCs, engineering procurement,

7:18 construction firms, and they basically do most of the data center installs and the utility scale battery farms So as you mentioned, they're really seeing growth in the data center market as always

7:34 on the news. But that's a, we've talked to Google, possibly a partnership there. They have a microgrid in Nevada that we work with. There's a new data center coming into New Mexico. We have a

7:48 partnership with a small kind of mom and pop the data center in Albuquerque. So we'd be doing a lot of backup there. One thing they really like is we're a modular battery so that we can scale to a

8:04 gigawatt, but it's actually very easy to transport and install. One of the things Gridworks, our primary EPC partner, says is that they spent like a quarter million dollars moving a 90, 000-pound

8:17 Tesla mega pack around. They had to get a special trailer and a special crane, so this, you wouldn't need any of that because you're modular little cylinders We have no fire suppression or no

8:28 thermal management, so cost savings, but also you could stack them high like in a tower and save, you know, real estate. You could even build them into the walls of a building. We're looking at

8:38 a lot of CNI and industrial. So, you know, RPE, they're very interested in modular batteries and, you know, that's a great advantage of ours. You mentioned a one megawatt solar project that

8:52 you're going to be partnering with. What's the timeline on that? Yeah, so, you know, we're closing a financing round and we'd be about six months from that. So it's probably one to two months

9:03 before that kind of timeline starts. We think, you know, late spring, early summer of 2026, we'll have that up and running. And where did you say that was located? Los Cruces, New Mexico, New

9:17 Mexico State University. A professor named Olga Lavrova, who came from San Dia, National Lab, is built an energy facility almost comparable to the NREL facilities in Colorado. She's got a plug

9:32 power, a hydrogen

9:36 electrolyzer. She's got all kinds of different battery technology. She's got a Tesla megapack. So she's great to partner with and very supportive.

9:45 Tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got into working on this lithium aluminum aluminum battery solution and what really drives you into working in this area? Sure, so I have

10:00 a finance degree from Georgetown and I started my career with Accenture Management Consulting and I ended up on the supply chain with a third party logistics company called Ringcam that does all the

10:12 global logistics for Intel and then they got into battery supply chain when I was there, Samsung and some others. A lot of high purity chemical and gas for etching and things like that. And you

10:27 know, I did an MBA at University of Michigan and the CEO of the Technology Transfer Office at the University of New Mexico pulled me in for the NSFI Corps and for mentoring two cohorts a year, 10

10:43 weeks each. They give them the students3, 000 to do market research, go to conferences. So I was doing that for five years And then I saw my co-founder pitch at the Comcast event. You know,

10:56 aluminum battery, no lithium or cobalt. I knew about the flammability issues. And then the carbon capture piece, and I said, this is really unique. And, you know, the sustainability and supply

11:08 chain, domestic supply chain possibilities. And then the university immediately paired me with them. So, yeah, I just, you know, I hadn't planned on starting a company at the time, but as we

11:20 went through the 10-week program, I said, this really has legs And sure enough, the NREL picked them right up. And so, I, and then the other company tried to license it out from under me. So,

11:31 kind of, it's kind of a quick, you know, decision. So, it talked us a little bit more about the capture part of the technology, 'cause we've talked about the battery. How many tons of CO2 can

11:43 you capture? We believe we can get in a gigawatt farm, probably a quarter million tons a year, you know.

11:53 Because you're feeding it with the feedstock of your ear, you said, where we should be constantly getting that from, depending on where your battery is located. Yeah, so we actually plan to

12:05 generate it on site eventually. We're ordering it through special suppliers, OEMs right now, but it's very abundant.

12:16 The generation on site would solve a lot of problems You mentioned graphite as another particular byproduct. Tell us a little bit more about that. So yeah, a partner of maple materials out of the

12:28 Bay Area, I met them

12:32 through the generator, G-beta, electrified Nevada program. And yeah, the pure CO2, he pitched that to graphite and I said, you know, this is a revenue. You know, graphite, very constrained

12:45 supply chain and there's been geopolitical issues constraining it even further And I said, here's another - you know, huge revenue stream. So

12:55 yeah, great company

12:58 and great partnership. And you know, it's a great opportunity. You know, in the long-duration energy storage space, cost is almost everything, at least to the utilities and EPCs. And you know,

13:10 our materials, aluminum's2 a kilogram, lithium's 20 plus, cobalt even more, cobalt's got the labor issues So we can actually have a low-levelized cost of storage battery. We think we can get

13:23 to010 a kilowatt-hour lithium set about 31 right now. And then with the revenue stream, it's the negative LCOS and no other battery. There's no other battery capturing carbon. So no other battery

13:37 generating revenue. So we see that as a huge selling point. And then that's CO2. You can get credits for that Yeah, carbon credits, revenue, graphite, cement, there's a lot of different.

13:51 Routes for

13:53 that hmm fascinating and what do you think has been the advantage of doing this in Albuquerque and starting off from the NREL You know labs and your experience over there. Yes, so, you know, the

14:06 state has been very supportive of New Mexico They a couple months out of the gate gave us a four hundred thousand dollar advanced energy award non-dilutive Which really was transformational for us and

14:17 they have the JTIP programs and job training incentives so they actually cover half the salary of staff below VP level for the first six months in so we've leveraged that and they have so You know,

14:32 and it's an energy where we're a stone's throw from the gates to Sandia National Lab, you know So very a lot of energy resources Tell us a little bit more about your team Yeah, so we just onboarded

14:46 a great CTO kunjin agarwal was had Tesla and international battery company and she just supervised a 50 megawatt hour plant build out for international battery two years ago, PhD in mechanical

14:59 engineering from MIT, just super smart and she's got a commercial mindset which is hard to find with a lot of PhDs

15:10 we found And so yeah my co-founder, Christy Fettrow wrote the patents, PhD from UNM two years ago, and Simmons Shaw came from a manufacturing finance background out of Arizona he was working with

15:26 an electronics company started his career with in banking on Wall Street, and we connected through the University of Michigan alumni network And talk to us about, you know, what if you thought,

15:39 you know, you said you got about 400k of non-dilutive funding, and you've tried to take advantage of a lot of other funding opportunities that

15:50 that are non-dilutive. What do you think now going forward as you're scaling? What are your options that you're looking at? And you talked about a race to please, yeah, talk about that. Yeah,

16:01 one thing that has been kind of

16:06 something we should have tried to get earlier on as an SBIR. So that's really, we've applied to 10, one to ARPA-E. It's a huge focus. We're really going after an SBIR because the state of New

16:19 Mexico also has a program to match an SBIR. So the non-dilutive. So that could be a great capital infusion. We are raising a four million dollar seed round right now that'll get us to delivery on

16:33 the New Mexico State University pilot in the data center for the military. So yeah, we're always pursuing non-dilutive, but we've had great support early actually, you know, the 21 initially

16:48 raised before the grants. We have a11 million convertible note from a defense contractor in Dallas. He's been very, very supportive. We had 100K match from the University of New Mexico,

17:02 University of Michigan invested. So we have one venture capital firm responsibly ventures out of California. So we've kind of got it. They've invested already. What's the total amount you guys

17:14 have raised? 21 and then the now up to 500 on the non-dilutive, so. The non-dilutive. Yeah. And that you would say, it's kind of like your pre-seed and you're now raising for a seed round,

17:28 which you said was how much? Four million. Four million. So talk to us about that journey of fundraising. I'm sure before you started this company, you haven't raised before. What are some of

17:42 the lessons you've learned or some of the challenges you think, especially for heart tech and for battery technologies? Yeah, so, you know, we've had great support from Angels that, you know,

17:54 we networked, we put on, you know, a showcase at the University of New Mexico and picked up some investors there. And then the conferences have been really great. We were at the Soft Week, which

18:05 is the Special Forces Technology Conference in Tampa, and sat down for lunch with Jeff Sanders And two months later, he kind of checked for half a million dollars, and then he's done, you know,

18:19 600, 000 more, and he's about to do more. So the conferences I leverage, I know they're expensive, and it kind of takes away, you know, you're traveling, spending on the flights, but really

18:31 just a great place to land investors we've found. Okay. Yeah. That's good feedback and good advice for founders that, you know, I know a lot of them when they start on their fundraising journey,

18:42 they do like kind of line up and spend all this money, you know, traveling, like if they're from Houston, going to Denver, going to California. going to New York. But it's worth it. I'd say,

18:55 yeah, yeah. You know, we've probably spent close to 80, 000 on conferences and travel, but from it, we've raised well over 11 million. So, yeah. That's a good ROI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

19:08 Any kind of challenges, you think? Also, you know, being not from the Bay Area, where a lot of the startups are from and where a lot of the investment is and capital still is, what do you think

19:19 some of the challenges that companies often face or you have faced? Yeah. So, you know, venture capital firms in general like to be close to the companies they fund. It's kind of changing a

19:30 little bit, but New Mexico, I've lived there 22 years, has been a flyover state, you know, very hard to raise money there. So, you know, we have struggled on the on the VC front. And I think

19:41 if we were in the Bay Area, it would have a much easier time developing relationships So, you know, New Mexico is making a big push. We actually have a sixty two billion dollar sovereign wealth

19:53 fund because we share the Permian Basin with Texas. It runs across under and since the fracking hit, it's just, I think we're the second largest oil producing state in the country now. So that's,

20:05 they think the sovereign wealth fund is going to hit a hundred billion. And so three years ago, they started putting money into venture capital. So they're up to 750 million mixed real estate

20:17 private equity and venture capital So they've put money into like DC, VC, Lux Capital, Playground, Global. So they're really kind of making an effort to reach out. And so companies are starting

20:29 to tap that. So when they put money into like these as LPs into these other funds, they probably require them to go and invest in companies in New Mexico. Is that kind of how it works? We've seen

20:42 some of them. Some of the bigger ones, I don't think they did that, but coastal ventures did come in pretty soon and fun. Spiritists, they're an interesting carbon capture company out of Los

20:52 Alamos National Lab.

20:55 Because we were all at the Rice Energy Tech Forum at this week. This

21:03 episode will probably come out a few weeks from now, but right now we're at Houston Energy and Climate Week. And one of the topics of conversation often for energy tech and for heart tech is like

21:14 this missing middle, that you can get some of this non-dilutive funding early on, you can get some grants, but then the technology is still not mature enough for VCs to come on. And VCs don't have

21:26 the kind of capital that you actually need to be able to scale.

21:31 So any thoughts you have on that, what are you thinking, also beyond your 4 million that you're able to raise, what other options are there for you to really be able to scale and get your long-term

21:45 storage batteries, use more widely because. I mean, I see there's a lot of use for this in the future. Yeah, so I would highly recommend getting an SBIR out of the gate, getting on dilutive to

21:58 cover most of your RD. That's one of the things that's really we should have done. And then, you know, we're seeing a lot of interest from like sovereign wealth funds, like Saudi Arabia, Norway.

22:11 I just, I didn't realize how much oil the Norway had, a19 trillion sovereign wealth fund So some of these and some family offices are really stepping in at like the series A, coming in with like 20,

22:24 100 million, 300 million. So, you know, getting through, you know, angels have been great getting through that pre-seed and into the seed. But, you know, when you really, when heart tech

22:36 needs that big capital, you know, some of the VCs have it. But I would look at, you know, out of country, sovereign wealth funds and family offices as well.

22:48 I think it's creative financing, the way you look at it, and there's a mixture of equity and debt once you start, you know, you need to scale versus you just need that growth capital to get you to

22:59 your pilot and improve the concept, your MVP, and then that'll allow you to, you know, get the attention of the VCs. And I think I heard that sentiment from a lot on a few different panels this

23:10 week. Yeah. Yeah You know, the one deal I heard of with the sovereign wealth fund was a debt equity mix. So they actually were, it was all debt, but then they were taking an equity piece as just,

23:23 you know, we're doing this. So yeah, some deals that are very, you know, creative are happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's kind of going to be the challenge

23:33 going forward is like being creative and figuring out like, how do we actually fund these companies in a way that we have not funded them before the venture capital model really started and took off

23:44 for digital solutions

23:47 and now largely used for AI, and it's a different ballgame when you're looking at longer-term horizons for the company to be able to scale and actually get the returns that these investors are

24:00 looking for. Are you ready to lead the decarbonization charge? Energy Technologies is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and expertise for energy

24:13 and carbon tech founders Join us at EnergyTechNexuscom and start building your Thunderlizard. Yeah, you know, in strategic partnerships, you know, we've talked to Halbert and they're using very

24:23 high temperature batteries and down in the wells. So there's, you know, we've talked to LG, Stellantis, we have a great relationship. So, you know, those strategic partnerships can get you the

24:33 scale resources as well. You mentioned strategic partners on the like a solar developer What other particular energy suppliers are you looking to partner with? Yeah, so you know, even some

24:46 residential, you know, solar groups that are starting to put more batteries residential. Yeah,

24:55 the EPCs, you know, those are the engineering firms that kind of design the rollout of the solar battery integrators actually might be our first because, you know, when we get to the, when we get

25:05 to the actual long duration PC need inverters and a battery management system, right now we're focused on cells. So we have a director from Fluence on our board. They're an integrator from C that

25:16 combined AES

25:19 and Siemens created them. And so they basically pack cells that they don't make and put the inverter in and do all the engineering for the big kind of C container model batteries. So that might be

25:30 the first step as partnering with someone like Fluence to take ourselves and pack them in and do all the electrical engineering piece. So EPCs, integrators, utilities, the military, all these

25:43 different.

25:45 You mentioned risk. I think whenever we think about lithium, there's always, you know, owned a an EV vehicle for over four years now. But whenever you think about where I live in the Suburban in

25:58 Houston, they were looking at a natural gas, like power generation unit. It got a lot of pushback. And how are you necessarily thinking about your particular application versus in small

26:11 municipalities for like backup power? Because the energy of a man is pretty high and I've experienced a lot of brownouts, just small blips during peak demand. But we'd love to hear a little bit

26:23 more about how your technology is really de-risking the energy space. Yeah. So up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, there's been a huge kind of issue that I think it was AES is coming in with big, you

26:38 know, with megapacks, like big Tesla batteries and like a sub community put up a huge fight. and they were eventually, you know, defeated, but they're really worried about, you know, fire,

26:50 off-gassing, all of these things. So we solve that, and so we've been doing outreach. You know, Moss Landing in California is massive fire right on an estuary, and heavy metals are in that

27:02 estuary now. So we've talked to a lot of people in that area, and, you know, as we roll out, there's a lot of sentiment that would support it So, you know, really do an outreach and educating

27:15 people about it, you know, and then with EVs and residential, I have a friend who won't park his Tesla in his garage. He's just, you know, afraid something, you know, and there was a, I guess

27:26 during the floods in Florida, you know, I guess ocean water went up three feet on a Tesla and it got into the battery pack and caught on fire. Anyway, there's just, you know, people are really

27:37 wary of all that, and we solved those problems It's completely aluminum is inert. There's no thermal runaway. Not flammable, so. Could you use it for a card, if like an EV battery too? 'Cause I

27:45 know

27:53 you're focusing on long-term storage. Yeah, that's a great segue. So we actually have like a whole aluminum platform. So we've got aluminum ion batteries that are not gas. So they don't have to

28:04 be in a cylinder. And those are good mobility batteries. EV

28:13 is kind of farther down the roadmap, but Rocket Lab actually came to us recently and they want satellite batteries. And so the aluminum ion is more fast response. They charge in one minute. They

28:23 don't have the highest energy density. They're at about 220 watt-hours per kilogram, whereas like a Tesla battery is 260. But they're not flammable. They're lightweight, low-cost materials

28:35 domestically sourced. So we have a memorandum of understanding with Rocket Lab right now. And they're considering investing in the seat rounds. You mentioned, I think we've heard the word scaling

28:48 quite a few times this week, just outside of this room, not I've mentioned it. When you talked about going to one megawatt, but data centers and power users are talking about gigawatt scale. Like

28:60 when do you think you'll get to that gigawatt scale? Yeah, so a gigawatt scale battery farm for us is probably gonna be on the order of like 700, 000 cylinders And so to get to that scale,

29:16 probably five years to be able to put, you know, manufacture 700, 000 cylinders. Although we've got a part and we're looking at working with Kodak, they've got coding technology, battery

29:29 innovation center. There's a couple other OEMs that, you know, potential partnerships that it might be a lot sooner. It might be, if we can, you know, leverage existing, you know, cat and cat

29:42 bags, we could get to 700. thousand cylinders pretty fast. What do you need to get to

29:49 for it to be like a viable commercial option that's investable? Yeah so right now we've you know we're doing RD on capacity and current you know we we have a one amp hour battery and we're we think

30:06 we can get that to 150 amp hour in the next six months based on you know some new things like Rifidic foam we actually met a company through through another podcast in Japan called Azul that has a

30:19 catalyst that's based on a hemoglobin and it platinums like the most the highest performance catalysts but it's extremely expensive there's a fraction of the cost and it mimics platinum and it's

30:32 highly scalable you could go into any chemical plant and mass produce it so we're bringing all there coming out from Japan on on October 13th, we're highly, you know, positive about that. We're

30:42 going to try the prophetic foams. There's a lot of different things to increase the capacity and the current. So, yeah, and the new capital allow us to run more in parallel and to do modeling.

30:53 And there's several companies that are modeling battery durability, how many cycles you using, you know, machine learning and other, you know, software technologies, data science. But what is

31:06 kind of your goal right now to get to how many megawatts in terms of long-term storage? We want to hit the, yeah, we want gigawatt plus, we actually have a gentleman that has a 500 megawatt hour

31:20 concession in the Congo, DRC, and he's basically like, you can have as much of that as you want, and so you just deliver it. So, you know,

31:30 we're trying to work fast towards large, large scale, you know, farms and support Africa is a huge market and rapidly. know, they're not going to build out as much transmission as the US has.

31:44 They're going to do a lot of microgrids. Okay, right. So for the microgrids, you need like

31:50 gigawatt storage. Okay. That'd be less. Yeah. Rio Tinto and they have the largest microgrid in the world because their minds are out in the middle of nowhere in the outback in Australia. So yeah,

31:58 I think they actually have like a

32:03 500 megawatt hour microgrid out there in the middle of nowhere in Australia. Interesting. And it's talked us a little bit about you've been here all week. What's it like being in Houston compared

32:16 to all the other places that you've been in fundraising, talking to strategic partners, industry, how have you found the ecosystem here in Houston? It's amazing on the energy side. We were at the

32:29 event at Rice and there was just a room full of probably 70 investors, everyone from next era to the Halliburton, to Eaton and so. Yeah, there's just such a heavy energy focus here. It's the

32:43 ideal place for us to network and visit. So it's fantastic. The event was probably the most well-organized event like

32:54 that I've been to. I've been to other one-on-one matchmaking events and just high energy and real engagement. Yeah, that's why they call us the energy capital of the world. But then to kind of

33:07 compound, talking about the week, this is the second year and being involved in it. We had the pile of thon, which, you know, amazing turnout, tremendous amount of pitches. But one of the

33:17 common themes was we're trying to bring the community kind of stitch it together. Houston's massive, like, if you look at land mass perspective, it can take you, two miles can take you, you know,

33:27 20 minutes or versus in other cities, you can go across the entire, you know, city within 20 minutes and so forth. But what would be like your biggest takeaway, Like from. this week. For us as

33:43 organizers and promoters of the city, to basically have another successful week next year. Yeah, well, the oil and gas companies are a lot more interested in batteries than I thought. I had a

33:57 great conversation with Halliburton and the use cases I was never aware of, that they're putting batteries down in an oil well. So, learnings have been huge. And

34:10 just learning that Houston is really kind of probably the key place that we need to build a presence in network because of the energy industry. I didn't realize how huge it was down here. So, yeah,

34:23 a lot of learnings, you know, of battery applications, what kinds of companies are looking into long-duration storage. So, yeah, a lot of learnings. How did you find out about the, was it the

34:36 rice event that kind of attracted you? Or did you know it was like a week of a lot of activities going on? Yeah, an entrepreneur named Becca Seagull, she's doing flow battery research. And we've

34:49 been in contact with her through Annrell and things. And she sent me the link for the event. And so I'm very appreciative. Yeah. So. That's really good. Yeah. And Becca, I think relocated to

35:01 Houston for like two years. Yeah. Recently, you run into a few events and things like that. And her tech is complementing long-duration energy storage. No, it's true. I mean, the city has done

35:13 a lot to actually help innovation and entrepreneurs and founders in the past, I would say, five to six years. We've stepped up a lot with the ion, which is in partnership with Rice. And Rice

35:28 University is really taking a leading role in this area. I mean, they've been doing the energy tech form. 27 years, they said. But I think 20 years ago, the whole environment was very different

35:42 on that, but the investors that came here, I don't even know if many came from abroad.

35:48 It's good to see for those of us who've been here, the progress that we've made, and then every year, I see so many of you come from outside of Houston, because that's also what a lot of investors

35:58 here want to see or not, because the local companies, they see all the time at all the different events. Yeah, it's a great resource for the flyover states like New Mexico to come down and get

36:10 that concentration, and it's kind of closer, and you know, in between the coast, so it's a great kind of gathering point for flyover states. You mentioned, you know, money makes the world go

36:22 around when, and you obviously need capital. Is it being a, you know, investor myself as well, thinking about, like, you talked about single-family offices, like, what's the biggest thing

36:34 that you're necessarily speaking? speaking with them about are they hesitant or are they just not aware of this industry? Yeah, some are not aware at all. Others have scouts that we were down in

36:48 Austin at an event and we pitched and a scout for a family office in California was there and took

36:59 a lot of interest and came out. And then we met our biggest angel. He was kind of a one person family office. So, you know, he, he used an electrical engineer and didn't really know a lot about

37:10 long duration, but he knew about battery performance and came in. But, yeah, we have talked to a fair amount of family offices that just right up front say we just don't have the battery knowledge

37:21 to look at this. So, you know, they're starting to, you know, some folks are starting to put lists on social media. You know, here's the family offices that are interested in this. And like

37:32 Skydak up in Chicago is

37:36 an energy company family office. So you don't really targeting those. When you talk about manufacturing, right? Onshoring it, that's I think a common theme for a lot of different companies based

37:48 off of things are going on around the world with Terrace and such. What are you, how are you necessarily thinking about that in terms of would it be vertically integrating it or using a third party

37:49 manufacturer to help you get to a particular point? And, you know,

38:06 scale beyond that? So that's a difficult decision because one contract manufacturer in particular that we spoke with, you know, was pretty clear, you know, your chemistry, all that, that's your

38:19 IP. But if we innovate on the process, the manufacturing piece, you know, we're gonna keep that IP. So then, you know, if we ever wanted to come back in-house, then we have this contract

38:30 manufacturer with IP. So that's kind of our primary concern with working with contract manufacturers. But given the opportunity for a very large scale project, there's kind of the benefits outweigh

38:45 some of the challenges there. Yeah, yeah. And I think there's a big pusher momentum for a lot of different technology, whether it's AI or kind of automation, to help us get to that advanced

38:59 manufacturing that we need to, to be able to produce your gigawatt scale of batteries. Yeah, automation is gonna be key in North America in the

39:10 US, it's gonna be critical for battery, for the battery industry in this country. Yeah, and we've already seen that, that if you

39:19 look at

39:21 the Tesla facility, manufacturing facility, it's mostly just robots, it's not humans doing it And we see, you know, the way China got really skilled. I mean, I'm sure they're doing a lot of

39:33 automation too, but they've just really focused on getting very good at manufacturing, and it's not just like very basic manufacturing, but very sophisticated manufacturing. And I think that we

39:44 still have a long way to go to get there to that scale so that we're not dependent on foreign supply chain. Yeah, yeah, we've definitely had our challenges. But unfortunately, there's a lot of

39:57 resources going in. It's kind of shifted over to the DoD now, but they're really pouring resources into battery development. The military uses huge amounts of batteries across everything from a

40:10 missile to sensors to all kinds of weaponry and vehicles. And bases, they're starting to build a lot of microgrids. We did a demo in Norway with US Special Forces and the Norwegian Special Forces

40:26 for Arctic warfare. you know, the northern part of the Scandinavian countries are really starting to they have a drone force they're building and And lithium batteries really just don't serve up in

40:39 the northern parts of the of Finland, Sweden Norway So we had a great we had a great demo there winter January demo And you know, there's gonna be a lot of opportunities with NATO and the us Seems

40:55 like you've done a lot of good pilots in demos already all over the world. Yeah Yeah, that kind of shows that okay. There is a product market fit here There's a demand for this and people or do you

41:04 find that people are coming to you? Yeah, yeah Yeah, we you know, we had a drone company come to us a month ago We've got you know solar developers coming to us utilities We have people who want

41:18 to work for us like almost weekly like high skilled people out of Stanford Caltech emailing us once a week. Oh, really good, yeah. It's a really good traction. I mean, that is to sign if they

41:29 say product market fit when people are calling you and you're no longer going out and getting leads, yeah. Yeah, you mentioned, I think early on the military or Department of Defense, I think

41:40 there's a lot of opportunity there.

41:45 Yeah, it seems like now is the right time. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome Well, tell us about, you know, all the people who are listening right now, if there's any way that they can help you, anything

41:58 that you're looking for that our listeners could support you on. Yeah, yeah. So paid pilots are huge or pilots that, you know, build our brand. You know, those are our core focus right now.

42:14 Just getting the word out, you know, other opportunities to speak the podcast radio, television interviews because. they're really, you know, people don't know aluminum batteries. So we just

42:25 really have a, you know, we're even considering hiring a lobbyist to, to educate, you know, DC and things like that, because there's just really no one's ever heard. I've spoken with lithium

42:36 battery industry kind of technicians, like 20, 30 years in a manufacturing facility,

42:45 and they've never heard of an aluminum battery. You know, so a lot of that. So there's a, there's a knowledge gap. Yeah. Definitely Which, you know, when you think about these policy makers

42:53 who are supposed to set the policies and like drive new innovation and new technology, and if they don't know about this technology, how can they put the right policies in place? That will drive

43:04 that code. Yeah, so I think if there's someone listening that's, you know, has some good reach in terms of marketing and kind of education, 'cause as education for lobby maker, lobbyists, and

43:16 also single family offices

43:20 and other areas that we see where there's sources. of funds to help us grow. Exactly. Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming, Tom. And if you have any last parting words that you'd like to

43:31 say or key message that you want to send to the audience about your company or technology, what would you say? Yeah, well, I'd like to just send some words of support out to, you know, the clean

43:43 tech, climate tech, hard tech community. I know it's been a very rough last six months, especially on the fundraising side So just hang in there and, you know, feel free to reach out to me or,

43:55 you know, others because, you know, the support is there, saw it at Rice, and it's gonna come back around, so. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point. I think we saw this week.

44:06 Everyone was surprised. A lot of them who came from out of town at the turnout at all the events, at the pilotathon on Tuesday, at the energy tech forum, people are here. People are not

44:15 disappearing. They're not going away. They've not stopped working on the things that they consider are going to be important

44:22 So that's a very important message for everyone listening to know. Well, thank you, any other last questions on your mind, Deb? Nope, if you need help, come to Houston. Yeah, we're here,

44:35 we're here for you. Yeah, we applied to Greentown Lab, so hopefully that goes through and then we'll be spending a lot more time here.