The Engine announces investments in first group of startups
Summary
The Engine, founded last year by MIT, today announced investments in its first group of seven startups that are developing innovations poised for transformative impact on aerospace, renewable energy, synthetic biology, medicine, and other sectors. The Engine’s patient capital has been a major help for the startup, which emerged from a project in the J-WAFS Solutions program, a commercialization grant of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab administered in partnership with the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. “It makes it easy for us to meet, get early research started, and have a smooth transition from lab to commercial product.” Baseload Renewable’s battery system is based on cheap, readily available, and energy-dense sulfur dissolved in water as the anode, with an equally low-cost cathode. Because the components are low-cost and allow for great energy-density, the system can store electricity from renewable sources for long durations — multiple days to months — for about a fifth to a tenth the cost of traditional battery storage for the grid. The startup has developed low-cost sensors that detect and measure a range of chemical substances in food that indicate rot as well as toxic gases, to help ensure worker safety and environmental protection.