NM awards $3M to energy startups

Business Journals

22-04-2025

New Mexico awards over $3 million to seven energy tech startups, boosting innovation in the state's advanced energy sector through non-dilutive funding.
The New Mexico Economic Development Department Office of Science and Technology hosted its Advanced Energy Awards program on April 16, where it held final pitches and awarded $3.36 million to seven startups focused on energy technology, according to Office of Science and Technology director Nora Meyers Sackett. This includes:
$925,000 to Spiritus, focused on the development of direct air capture technology.
$925,000 to VastVision, which is developing a technology that helps companies keep track of their physical assets.
$550,000 to Kilonewton, a service that provides professional technical services for the renewables and related manufacturing industries.
$500,000 to FireEscape, which helps manage wildfire risks with advanced analytics and data-driven mitigation solutions.
$440,000 to Carbogenics, an Edinburgh-based company which produces sustainable carbon adsorbents from difficult to recycle organic waste, including coffee cups and wastewater screenings, according to the company's website.
$10,000 to Dash2 Labs, which develops targeted Generative AI solutions to enhance decision-making across operations, project management, manufacturing and technology development, according to the company's website.
$10,000 to TrollWorks, which
develops and markets technologies related to biomass conversion, particularly biochar and bioenergy systems, with a main focus on creating efficient and sustainable solutions for energy generation and soil improvement using biomass.
"New Mexico has always been an energy state. ... What kind of energy that looks like? It's obviously changing, and we are meeting the need for that industry," Meyers Sackett said.
The amount of funding awarded to startups was similar to last year's award's pilot program, but distributed differently. In 2024, $3.4 million was awarded with amounts ranging from $776,000 to $300,000.
The New Mexico Advanced Energy Award (NMAEA) program is a competitive state-funded grant that awards non-dilutive funds to New Mexico startups which submit proposals geared towards advanced energy innovation and commercialization.
The program, developed to support retention and expansion of businesses, will help early-stage companies develop products deemed by event judges to have high growth potential.
Applications submitted by startups required a detailed executive summary, a slide deck/presentation, budget and capitalization table.
Startups also had to provide projections of what they expect the company to look like in the next five years, including staff, revenue and growth projections, according to the NMOST website.
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The New Mexico Economic Development Department Office of Science and Technology hosted its Advanced Energy Awards program on April 16, at UNM Rainforest.
Paul Zelizer
Albuquerque Business First talked with VastVision co-founder and CEO Kyle Guin, one of this year's top two awardees.
VastVision is focused on inventory management technology to help companies manage critical assets using passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips (microchips which can be attached to or embedded in objects), AI-driven software and automation.
Guin said non-dilutive funding sources like this one protects leaders' equity in the company. The VastVision team took a 'bit of a calculated risk' earlier this year. The startup had a fully committed pre-seed funding round and decided to turn that down in order to further de-risk its technology.
'We really wanted to build a better picture of what we think this company is going to look like. When we took that calculated risk, we had to operate incredibly lean,' he said.
Guin said this award is important following that lean period, because the award will allow the company's team to, with some of its venture funding, build out a small research manufacturing facility in Albuquerque.
VastVision having its own facility would be significant according to Guin, because it would allow the company to generate its own organic intellectual property and complete some tests and fabrication absent of the red tape experienced in government facilities it currently uses including those at Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory or the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT).
VastVision just finished a TRGR (Technology Readiness Gross Receipts) Technology Readiness Initiative project with Sandia, leveraging $150,000 with the lab and working inside their facility. They also have an active CRADA with LANL, and access to CINT under the New Mexico Lab-Embedded Entrepreneur Program (NM LEEP) fellowship.
'Hopefully (the new facility) just speeds things up overall, and helps us further de-risk the tech, … and then we can kind of revisit that the more venture funding side,' Guin said.
Guin said the facility timeline is 'as soon as possible,' but he anticipates choosing a location, purchasing machines and having a fully functional facility could take six to eight months, so the end of 2025 is a reasonable estimate.
The company has five full-time employees and one intern, and is looking to hire two more.