A Chicago-based startup that wants to be at the center of the hydrogen revolution raised $4.5 million this week to help accelerate industrial decarbonization.
The seed round in Celadyne Technologies Inc. was co-led by Maniv and Dynamo Ventures, with participation from EPS Ventures.
The first tenant at Fulton Labs' Science Ready Lab Suites, Celadyne is looking to create more durable fuel cells to be used as an environmentally friendlier alternative to diesel engines, and makes electrolyzers that produce low-cost green hydrogen as fuel.
"Most hydrogen companies you talk to are focused on making hydrogen cheap," Celadyne CEO Gary Ong told Chicago Inno. "You can't make something and expect people to use it. You actually have to show them the value of it, and that means you need to show them the value of it by spurring up demand in high-value use cases [such as] trucking, shipping."
Celadyne expects to double its customer base and to continue to advance its fuel cell technology in the next year.
"We came out of Argonne National Lab, but one of the problems with deep sciences is that it costs a lot of money to go to the next-generation lab to do the research and commercialization," Ong said.
CBRE helped with the build-out of Celadyne's space at Fulton Labs, and the company was able to move in within six months of signing.
The startup's team of 12 includes engineers from Siemens Energy, Argonne National Lab, the U.S. Navy, Micron Technology, Hyzon Motors and Northwestern University, and Ong expects to hire two more.
"Our team has strong Midwestern roots," he said. "I've had two employees tell us that had we been somewhere else, not in the Chicago area, they may not have taken the job."
Ong added that being downtown gives Celadyne easy access to the entire Chicago startup ecosystem, including mHub, where it used early machining capabilities to build early prototypes.
The $4.5 million will be put toward accelerating testing with Celadyne's partners and commercialization.
Ong said, "$4.5 million doesn't sound like a lot for a deep-tech startup, but if you look at how much venture capital we've raised, it's over $7 million."
Celadyne has received additional support from the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, ARPA-E and the Department of Defense, giving the company a runway of around 24 months, according to Ong.
Moving forward, the startup will look for space for a quality-control manufacturing site — of around 20,000 square feet — with Chicago at the top of its target list. Ong hopes to start building by January 2025.
He added that Chicago's new Midwest hydrogen hub, announced in October, will provide great new opportunities for Celadyne as well.
"The project basically has two pieces: The hub does more commercial deployment of hydrogen for specific use cases like steel, concrete and industrial commercialization. The second is meant to be for supporting small businesses and entrepreneurial activities. We are planning to participate in both," Ong said.
