1.23.24-Japan-Osmoses

ARIADNA RODENSTEIN: So thank you, again. Thank you for being here. This is the lightning talks. So welcome. I'm Ariadna Rodenstein, Program Manager with MIT Startup Exchange. And we're delighted that you're here with us today. Shortly, you will hear from 11 exciting startups, all members of MIT Startup Exchange, and all working on innovative solutions to problems around the world on energy and sustainability, mobility, AI, and the life sciences.

But first, I'm going to give a brief overview of our program. So MIT Startup Exchange is led by MIT Corporate Relations, which is also home to the Industrial Liaison Program, or ILP, as you heard earlier. And the two programs are highly integrated. We work very closely together.

And at Startup Exchange we identify and select startups that are MIT connected, so that we can help make introductions that could lead to potential collaborations and partnerships. And our mission is to help the startups grow and expand as they continue to work on solving challenges around the world, some of the greatest challenges across the globe.

And all the startups, as you're going to see, are highly connected to the institute. They have very strong ties. And some of the ways are either with licensed technology, they can also be founded by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni, and they can also be vetted by some of our MIT partners, including the Engine, the E14 Fund, CSAIL, MIT.nano, just to name a few.

We have around 1,000 startups in the network, and they usually join the program at pilot stage or beyond. And they cover all sectors and all geographies. We also have within our program, a group of startups that we call STEX25. You might have heard of them. And we provide customized support for a period of 12 months. And they have greater visibility and more opportunities for connections to industry. And we actually have three startups that are STEX25 presenting to you today-- Nth Cycle, Ikigai Labs, and DxLab.

So let me talk a little bit about the value of Startup Exchange. So for the startups, there's exposure to a global network of industry leaders. And for ILP members, there's access to around 1,000 vetted MIT connected startups. We host around 30 events per year on a global basis, as well as locally, and most are on a hybrid mode, such as conferences like this.

And the benefit to ILP members is that we can tailor an event according to your needs. And the benefit to the startups is that we can take them to all these different markets where they're expanding into, and they have visibility into other ecosystems, and have other opportunities to connect with industry.

We also do calls for startups where they can apply and speak at conferences, but also can help an ILP member directly with a challenge that you might be facing in your industry. Startups can apply, and if you select them you can work directly together. And we do this through our platform, our website.

And we also have curated meetings throughout the year. We work closely with the ILP program directors. And we make introductions of a variety of ways. And with all this, I'd like to show that we have a very curated and customized approach to what we do. We know the startups very well. They have different sizes, different needs, and ILP knows the ILP members very well. And so we work closely together to make these introductions happen and help wherever we can. And that is what really distinguishes us at Startup Exchange.

And so the goal of some of these introductions is really to move onto potential collaborations and partnerships of different types, and at the end have some success cases. And these are some examples that have been made public. But there's many more. And ideally, this can have the shape of a proof of concept, a large pilot, becoming a customer, joint R&D, and all the way to an acquisition. And so I hope that some of the conversations that happen today will lead to more success cases.

And before I turn it over to the startups, these are some of our upcoming events. We were in Bangkok last week. And we're heading to Milan next week. At the end of February, we're having an event on AI in Cambridge. And we also have our Demo Day, which we host usually virtually on a quarterly basis. So that is something that hopefully you will join us as well. We have startups that are newer to our program. And the next one is on March 13.

And then we have our annual ecosystem conference at the end of April, also in Cambridge. And then we have some webinars throughout each semester on a variety of topics. So I hope you can really join us. You can check the Startup Exchange and ILP websites for this. And for any questions on any of this, please come talk to me or the ILP program directors, and we're happy to help.

And with that, these are the startups presenting to you today. And then you'll be able to engage at the exhibit as well. But we'll start with Osmoses. And this is a radical innovation in the world of membrane separation. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

FRANCESCO BENEDETTI: Thank you very much, Ariadna for the nice introduction. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here. My name is Francesco, and I'm CEO and co-founder at Osmoses. We're a clean tech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where we are transforming molecular separations.

Our journey started back in 2016 as a research project between MIT and Stanford University. Our founders team had a background in materials science, chemical engineering and chemistry. And we then incorporated into Osmoses in 2021, when we received funding by The Engine, which is our other MIT connection. And since then, we've been scaling our product and making progress.

So why are we working on transforming molecular separations? Well, the cost of unmixing, purifying, and separating molecules is massive, both for the industry and for the environment. We're talking about 15% of the world's energy that is wasted on inefficient molecular separations and 16% of carbon emissions.

We heard in the talks before how much decarbonizing is important. And companies just like you, as well as governments, are investing hundreds of billions of dollars toward this. And let me tell you that there's no way we're going to hit our net zero goals if we don't introduce innovation in how we perform separations at industrial level. So this is why our mission at Osmoses is to rebuild industrial infrastructure where separations are not a bottleneck to a cleaner future anymore.

Traditional separations are very effective, but at the same time very energy intense. And this is because they rely on thermal processes to perform these separations. Membrane technologies are a different approach. They operate as molecular filters. They remove the thermal component, but the problem with traditional membranes is their poor separation, which leads to high operating costs and eventually low adoption and impact. Which is why at Osmoses we have been developing a new platform of membrane technologies that check all the boxes, very high throughput, unprecedented selectivities, making the Osmoses technology a clear alternative to traditional energy intensive processes.

We are achieving that by commercializing breakthrough science. We started looking into exploring new polymers, ladder polymers, that when manufactured into membrane technologies leave behind porosity that has similar size to that of gas molecules, delivering exceptional separations. And we're targeting gas separations, because this is where the most unmet need in the markets are. And gas molecules are the smallest molecules on Earth, which is really why this is breakthrough science. Because we can separate them based on size.

We're not the only one excited about this. As I mentioned, we're funded by The Engine and other venture capital firms, but also supported by several government organizations. We're going to start with hydrogen, because it's a molecule that is going to play a huge role in the energy transition, both in chemical production and potentially also as clean energy fuel. And in order to reduce the carbon intensity of hydrogen molecules, separations play a very important role. And that's what we're trying to achieve.

However, this is just the beginning. Because we have a platform technology that can play a role in multiple verticals of the energy transition, as you see in this slide with all of these applications. This is already a $10 to $15 billion market that is projected to grow up to $35 billion market by 2030.

We are making membrane modules. This is our product. We work directly with end users. We capture value by working directly with them understanding their pain and use cases, and designing solutions to solve them. We are planning to bring this innovation to Energy Partners, together make membrane system that eventually we deliver to end users.

And in the last couple of years, we made a ton of progress both on growing our team and making progress towards building our prototype modules. And now we're going full speed ahead in what is our priority which is piloting in the field with customers, and eventually commercialized solutions by 2027.

So why Japan is strategic for us? Well, Japan is determined about the energy transition as much as we are. And so far, we had a lot of traction. We have multiple conversations with partners. And we're spending the next nine days really traveling around, trying to meet as many people as possible, and exploring these partnerships.

So what are we looking for? We're looking for piloting in the field. So if you have use cases, please share them with us. We're looking for engineering partners and also manufacturing partners, because it's important to operate with local partners to achieve results faster. And eventually we want to commercialize and implement this solution here in Japan.

So please don't hesitate to come later on to the showcase and meet Aaron and Katherine and myself, and learn more about Osmoses, where the smallest molecules meet the biggest opportunities in the energy transition. Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.