6.6.24: MIT STEX Demo Day - Sesame Sustainability

EMRE GENCER: Hello. Thank you very much for being here. I'm the CEO and cofounder of Sesame Sustainability. So I brought my slides because we have a number of MIT-related connections. So I was a principal research scientist, and I was at MIT for the last seven years. Jim recently graduated, another cofounder, from PhD chemical engineering. And Paul Sizaire graduated this year with master's from TPP program. So we developed Sesame software at the MIT Energy Initiative, and this is a license from MIT to develop the commercial version.

So today I will be talking about our platform, which is an industrial decarbonization software solution targeting mostly heavy industry and transportation sector. And the reason we are focusing on these sectors is basically, combined, industrial and transportation sectors emit more than 46% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, and we need to decarbonize by 2050 to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. There is a huge pressure on the companies, governments to do decarbonization. But when we look on the planning, reporting, and verification tools, they lack industrial know-how, and there is a big issues where people and companies do not take actions.

So we believe one of the reasons that we see this is technical diligence is quite difficult right now. Most companies are using outdated simulation, cost, and emission assessment capabilities. And these capabilities are in different types of software, different groups, so on and so forth. So it is really time to put together everything and consolidate these solutions. So these types of analyses are quite expensive, time consuming, and also it doesn't really answer the need of evaluating many, many technologies, which wasn't existing, I don't know, 10 to 15 years ago.

So our platform really tries to bring together everything. So we initially built an analytical engine. This combines first-principle models so that you can really understand what's going on in a technology, integrated cost, and emissions analysis. So, ultimately, our goal is decarbonization. So we are layering lifecycle assessment into any type of analysis we do so you can really understand the impact of emission reduction impact of your choices.

We have developed unique optimization capabilities where you can optimize your renewable operations to deployment of different technologies based on resource availability, so on and so forth. And also we are trying to capture as many policy levers as possible. Like in the US, 45V Inflation Reduction Act is a good example on the hydrogen side, but we are trying to make it global as we move forward. And you can use Sesame as an end-to-end modeling and analysis software for all your decarbonization planning needs.

A little bit deeper dive into what we do. So Sesame platform combines plant-level information, which databases that we curated over time; first-principle models to capture all relevant technical, financial, and regulatory aspects to make better decarbonization decisions.

But our really secret sauce or the reason we believe this will be a game changer technology is because we have also built a unique, very easy-to-use web interface so that experts and nonexperts can use Sesame to make better decisions. So we are really proud on the usability and user experience part of our software as well as the analytical engine that we built over time.

Since the launch of Sesame, which was in 2023, we had quite a bit commercial traction. So our first commercial contracts have been signed, and we are still on the pilot phase. And this includes a multinational energy company.

We opened up a program called Design Partner Program to work closely with the potential clients and to participate in Sesame's industrial advisory board as well. And in the meantime, Sesame has been a trusted authority since we've been developing at MIT. But over the last couple of months also, we have a project with Department of Energy where we are working with the Hydrogen Demand Initiative to evaluate different hydrogen hubs and how we can create demand for the hydrogen hubs.

We worked with the Energy Futures Initiative on 45V policy analysis and hydrogen infrastructure analysis. And also Sesame technology have been used in recently published National Petroleum Council report on low-carbon hydrogen study, national study on the low-carbon hydrogen, and that's also available online.

So basically today what I'm hoping to get out of this demo day is we have a partnership opportunity. So we aim to work closely with our future users to learn and meet your needs and also implement features that are essential for your companies. So we already have our first partner, and we are in the contracting phase with a couple of other multinational energy companies.

With this partnership, you will get up to 20 users per company. We can provide engineering support if you need it. There will be a seat for you on our industrial advisory board. So the seats are limited. So we are limiting this program to 6 to 10 customers from three industry segments. And ultimately, of course, there will be some additional benefits when we commercially launch the software in early 2025.

So that's all about Sesame for today. I'm curious to hear your questions and learn more in the breakout session as well.

ARIADNA RODENSTEIN: Emre, thanks so much. So can you tell us a little more about the industry segments that you are focusing on?

EMRE GENCER: Absolutely. So we are mostly focusing on the heavy emitters, so like oil and gas, utilities, any company related to hydrogen, whether it's on the demand side or supply side or hydrogen side, as well as heavy-duty transportation.

ARIADNA RODENSTEIN: OK, thank you. And tell us a little more about the hydrogen importance and your focus on that.

EMRE GENCER: So right now, the most issues that we are seeing in the hydrogen economy is on two sides. One is we don't have enough demand, so even if we can produce clean hydrogen. So we are really trying to evaluate how we can create demand meaningfully and cost effectively. And, of course, we shouldn't create demand just to create demand.

But on the supply side also, since the new hydrogen is mostly low-carbon hydrogen, it requires quite sophisticated optimization to understand the renewable profiles and size the equipment according to your resource availability, whether you are using solar, wind, energy storage, so on and so forth. And we are tackling all of these with our software platform.