Milwaukee startup
Advanced Ionics, a company focused on tackling the decarbonization of heavy industry, has been selected out of a pool of 420 businesses to take part in the
Fondo de Emprendedores accelerator.
The accelerator is hosted each year by
Repsol through the Madrid-based company’s entrepreneurship fund. Repsol is a Spanish multinational energy and petrochemical company. The Fondo de Emprendedores accelerator focuses on startups that offer innovative solutions for energy transition related to natural solutions for carbon footprint reduction, low emissions technologies, circular economy, and the digitalization of the energy industry.
Each of the five selected companies will receive financial support of 100,000 euros for one year and high-level technical and business advice from a team of expert mentors. Once the program is finished, there is the possibility of developing pilot tests with Repsol. The other four companies taking part in the accelerator include Solatom of Valencia, Spain; Nuspec Oil of York, United Kingdom; Jungle AI of Lisbon, Portugal; and GeForest of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
Advanced Ionics’ Symbiotic Electrolyzer Technology uses low-cost renewables or nuclear energy to produce green hydrogen for less than the current cost of fossil fuel-derived hydrogen. The company’s technology reduces costs by integrating with industrial facilities and pre-existing industrial processes.
Power-intensive alkaline and membrane-based electrolyzers require high electricity usage, typically above 50 kilowatt-hour per kilogram. Advanced Ionics’ electrolyzers work with on-site waste and process heat supplies, reducing up to 40% of the typical electricity requirement, the dominant cost driver of green hydrogen production. The company closed a
$4.2 million seed round this spring. Advanced Ionics' founder and CEO is
Chad Mason.
