11.15-16.23-RD-Active-Surfaces

TRICIA DINKEL: Hello, everyone. Welcome back. My name is Tricia Dinkel, and I'm the Partnerships and Engagement Manager of MIT Startup Exchange. And it's a pleasure to introduce MIT Startup Exchange Program and today's startup lightning talks.

MIT Startup Exchange is led by MIT Corporate Relations, which is home as well to the Industrial Liaison Program, or ILP. The two programs are highly integrated. While ILP's primary focus is to bring large corporations to MIT and connect them with the Institute's resources, at Startup Exchange, the focus is to facilitate partnerships and collaborations with MIT-connected startups and ILP industry members.

Our mission at Startup Exchange is to support the development and expansion opportunities for our startups to ultimately help solve the world's greatest challenges. Startups eligible to our program must have a strong connection to the Institute to consider them MIT-connected startups. And that connection can come through the founding team with an MIT faculty, MIT staff, or MIT alum, their technology as a licensed MIT Technology, or a strong affiliation to one of our peers who vet and support them, such as MIT.nano, CSAIL, or the engine.

Today, Startup Exchange Network includes over 1,000 startups. We typically start working with them when they reach pilot stage, when they have a technology or a product that is ready to be tested or used in a real environment. And the startups are primarily B2B and can be working in any sector and located in any geography.

Within this broad network, there's a group called STEX25, to whom we provide customized support throughout a 12-month period. This support translates into increased visibility and connections to industry. So when it comes to value, startups part of the MIT Startup Exchange are exposed to a global network of industry, and in turn, ILP corporate members have curated access to vetted MIT connected startups.

Our office organizes over 30 events a year, mostly hybrid conferences and webinars, like here today. Conferences typically include startup lightning talks, also like you'll be listening to today. While some events take place on campus, we do co-organize and host events with members. And these can take place in any city, any state, any country.

This is one of the most valuable offers, too, for both parties, for startups, because we take them directly to the markets they're aiming to enter and giving them visibility into new ecosystems, and for the corporates because the events are tailor made to help them achieve their goals. We also launch calls for startups based on corporate priorities or internal challenges, and these opportunities are featured on our website and any startup from our network can apply.

And our current next step is the one-on-one meetings that we facilitate between the parties. Ultimately, our approach is highly customized and targeted. We collaborate with many startups and corporates and they're all different. They come from different sectors, locations, and they have different sizes and needs. And what sets us apart is that we don't provide a uniform response to their requests. Our goal is to help ILP members and startups explore and develop successful collaborations.

And speaking of, to date, we've seen many successful partnerships and collaborations, like the small sample featured here. The successes include joint R&D, proof of concepts, large-scale pilots and acquisitions. So before passing this over to the exciting part, to the entrepreneurs, I'd like to invite you to some of our upcoming events.

On December 6, MIT Startup Exchange will host our virtual demo day to feature startup companies and allow self-selected breakout sessions for ILP members to learn more about the technologies. December 7 is the ILP Leading Edge Webinar on Digital Twins, and 2024 will kick off with the MIT Bangkok Symposium on January 18, and the MIT Japan Conference on January 23.

So with that, I'm thrilled to kick off today's MIT Startup Exchange lightning talks. We have 10 startups presenting and 13 startups exhibiting today, all of which have an important R&D application across a variety of industries. So the first I'd like to introduce to stage is Active Surfaces. Active Surfaces is commercializing an ultra thin film solar technology to make virtually any surface generate power. Join me in welcoming Active Surfaces.

[APPLAUSE]

RICHARD SWARTOUT: Hi, thank you. The world needs a lot of solar power. In 2023, we actually did a pretty good job. We installed 1 terawatt of solar energy throughout the entire industry over the last close to 30 years. That's great. But we need 20 terawatts by 2050 in order to hit IEA's projected net zero scenario.

It's hard to really empathize with that number, so that is the largest solar farm in the world today being installed every single day for 30 years. That's an insane amount. And primarily, we do this through solar farms, like this. Actually, close to 90% of that is solar farms.

But it's not sustainable. They take up really valuable land. They disrupt natural habitats. And grid connection queues are getting much, much longer as we speak.

The obvious solution, in a joint benefit scenario, is to deploy them on buildings. It has a lot of value, but less of 3% of buildings today have rooftop solar, and less than 1% of commercial assets have solar as well. And this needs to change.

The reason why, and you probably already know this, is that it's pretty costly. On average, it costs about $3 a watt to install on a roof. Only about 10% of that is the solar module. Everything else is the supply chain needed to get that solar panel on your building. And the reality is that close to 70% of buildings today are actually not solar ready. They would require costly upgrades, and ultimately, this could skyrocket really, really high.

And the core issue is really the technology. Silicon is close to 70 years old now. It's really heavy. It's really labor-intensive. And ultimately, it limits these applications.

But our technology-- and you've probably seen it, because it's been around on MIT News now-- is this ultra lightweight panel that can virtually go anywhere. It's a 120 times lighter than solar is today. And ultimately, it causes a significant reduction in that 90% of costs, driving down both structural costs and BOS, as well as being significantly cheaper to install from a labor perspective.

This opens new markets. You can deploy things on facades. You can open up that 70% of buildings that need upgrades. But ultimately, our technology is also cheaper. We're projecting close to half the cost of a deployment right now as we scale up. We are MIT-affiliated. Six of our patents are from MIT. I'm an MIT founder. And actually, our entire team is MIT alum right now.

And we can go again virtually anywhere. So you can think of probably a lot of applications for this, but car roofs to extend batteries of EVs, drones for long-range deployment, new spaces if you're in the built environment, joint deployments in farming space, but commercial assets are really interesting for us. And so if you're in that space, please, come talk to me.

As a startup, we're pretty young. We're about a year old. We're the MIT 100k winner this year. But we're also supported by a lot of different core initiatives, like Greentown Labs is currently where we're based, Venture for Climate Tech out of New York funded by NYSERDA, and Third Derivative, which is a part of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Like I mentioned before, we're supported by a bunch of amazing MIT alumnus, but we also have a lot of deep roots in the innovation ecosystem. And my ask for you today is actually one of two things. We are hiring. We're hiring a lot, actually. So if you know anybody interested who is a good engineer in the materials science, chemistry, electrical engineering, or materials spectroscopy and test space, please point them out to us.

And this is a room of amazing people that can provide us valuable partnerships. We're scaling up our operations right now. We're looking to start doing initial deployments next year. And so anything of this jumps out to you on the building sector, built environment, or any applications I'm not thinking of, please, come find me in the room next door. I'll be here the rest of the day and the rest of the conference. Thank you.