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This week, we saw a first in the green hydrogen space: Hydrogen technology startup Electric Hydrogen became the first billion-dollar startup in the industry.
Cofounded by solar manufacturer First Solar veterans David Eaglesham and Raffi Garabedian, along with Derek Warnick, Electric Hydrogen manufactures hydrogen electrolyzer technology. The company announced a $380 million Series C round on Tuesday, bringing total funding to $600 million at a valuation of $1 billion.
2023 Under 30 Energy lister Supratim Das has a reason to celebrate—He joined the company as its head of corporate development shortly after it launched in 2021. At the time, he was working at venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners, which became an early investor in Electric Hydrogen and co-led the Series C with Fifth Wall this year. Das is responsible for finding investors, dictating business strategy and developing financial models to mitigate risk.
“Hydrogen powers a lot of human civilization today,” Das says about his decision to jump ship from venture capital to manufacturing. “Electric Hydrogen’s technology, as I saw, was better than anything ever made in terms of performance for green hydrogen at the lab scale.”
Green hydrogen is exactly what it sounds like: a cleaner hydrogen that’s produced with near-zero carbon emissions emitted. As of 2021, 96% of global hydrogen was produced via fossil fuels, the largest contributors to climate change.
Electric Hydrogen’s technology can create green fuels by splitting water (H2O) into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. Such machinery isn’t unique to the company, but it claims it can build the largest electrolyzers in North America at economically feasible costs.
The startup is going up against the likes of diesel giant Cummins, whose subsidiary Accelera already has an operating 20 megawatt electrolyzer and plans to manufacture one with a 90 megawatt capacity. Electric Hydrogen’s first product–a 100 megawatt electrolyzer contracted by liquified natural gas company New Fortress Energy–is still in development, with production of their new 200,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Massachusetts to begin next year.
In 2022, despite an overall decline in VC funding, the clean energy space (excluding electric vehicles) saw upward of $2 billion in VC investment–up from just $160 million in 2018, per PitchBook data. This year has been fruitful, too—of the $1 billion invested in clean energy in the first half of 2023, green hydrogen companies took home the most funding.
John MacDonagh, senior analyst of emerging technologies at PitchBook, tells Forbes that companies like Electric Hydrogen might be gunning for more money to take advantage of the increasing government incentives. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act awards a clean hydrogen production tax credit of $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced.
Since Electric Hydrogen plans to sell its electrolyzers directly to companies in industries like steel and transportation that can produce their own hydrogen, this tax credit could open doors to a larger target market.
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Michael Jordan Is Now Worth $3 Billion And Joins The Forbes 400
MJ is creating his legacy off the court, too: Jordan is the first ever pro athlete to appear alongside the richest people in the U.S. on the 2023 Forbes 400, which went live on Tuesday. Other than his Jordan-branded Nike merchandise that sneakerheads go nuts for (bringing Jordan himself an estimated $260 million in pretax income last year alone), the six-time NBA champion sold his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets at a $3 billion valuation in August.
U30 On Air
Creator and Ohio local Alexis Nikole Nelson spent a day with Forbes to share how she’s turned her TikTok platform focused on foraging into a sprouting career.
See her video interview below:
Creator Corner
Happy TokTober! This month, the Under 30 newsletter will highlight the many ways listers are using social media to grow their brands.
Today we’re joined by Tim Chau, a 2022 Under 30 Media lister and the cofounder of Impact Media, a social media-based news platform highlighting politics, pop culture and social justice, by and for Gen Z.
The following has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Why did you decide to build your brand as a social-first platform?
Before starting Impact, I built an audience of millions on Instagram around various topics ranging from memes to astrology to One Direction, and even another social justice-focused page alongside my cofounder Michelle Andrews. Impact was a natural extension.
We decided to focus all our efforts on social media because the landscape of how young people got their news and information was drastically shifting. They’re not actively choosing to consume news or information as our parent’s generations used to do. They expect the most important and relevant news to pop up in their feeds, the FYP, or friends’ stories.
What can you say about the community you’ve built online? Who are they, where are they from, what are they most interested in?
If I could describe our audience as one person, I would say they are a young person, maybe 18 to 23, who cares deeply about advancing social issues and wants to not only learn more but also take action. These actions can range from donating money to support critical events, sharing a post with their community, signing a petition, or attending a march or protest.
You started primarily on Instagram, but now have multiple different forms of content you produce, including threads, a newsletter, and even a secondary platform, @environment. How do you decide when it’s time to make a brand extension?
I noticed that mainstream media often presents climate change in a way that isn’t accessible. The content is often filled with scientific jargon and doesn’t resonate with the perspectives of young people. Plus, a lot of content surrounding climate is not written through a lens that is inclusive of marginalized groups.
We decided to launch @environment after really understanding both the audience’s appetite and the opportunity to monetize. We were receiving a strong amount of demand from businesses and non-profit organizations in the environmental space and also noticed that our environment content on @impact was consistently performing well.
What’s the most important part of your social media strategy when it comes to brand growth?
We focus on fast response time and culture.If you’re able to post faster around breaking topics, your post will get more engagement and have a higher chance of reaching a wider audience. With larger organizations that require more approvals from higher-ups or legal, this means setting up systems and processes in place for the social team to be able to launch quickly.
What’s the biggest benefit to using social media for business? How about the biggest downfall?
With traditional mediums like TV, billboards or radio, it’s a one-sided conversation. However, social media facilitates a dialogue—a real, engaging conversation with instant feedback. Instead of just shouting into the void, businesses are part of a two-way conversation when they’re on social media, reinforcing trust and deepening their connection with the audience.
On the flip side, one of the most noticeable downfalls is that if you get social wrong, you really miss it. Some brands think that high-fidelity content with million-dollar budgets will succeed no matter what, but that’s not the case on social media. Getting social right is about authenticity and understanding your core audience. Overspending on expensive content by an agency that doesn’t deeply understand the core audience will fail to forge a meaningful connection with the audience.
Find @Impact here.
Lister Lowdown
-Mental health startup Cartwheel announced a $20 million Series A this month, which will go toward building out a tech platform and national expansion. Cartwheel was cofounded by Forbes Under 30 Education lister Joe English, who made the list in 2020 for his former company, Hope In A Box—a nonprofit education platform that worked with public schools to make classrooms more LGBTQ-friendly. Today, Cartwheel partners with schools to provide more comprehensive mental health care to students and families. Cartwheel counts 75 employees, nearly 50 of whom are licensed clinicians.
-Ethos, a plastics alternative company founded by 2023 Under 30 Social Impact listers Nuha Siddiqui and Kritika Tyagi, closed a $6.5 million Series A round this month. The round was led by Horizon Ventures and brings the company’s total funding to $11.2 million. The Toronto-based biomaterials company sells products like cutlery, clothing hangers and dental floss picks.
-Thymmune Therapeutics, founded by 2019 Under 30 Healthcare lister Stan Wang, was awarded $37 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to fund its latest project. Its Thymus Rejuvenation project aims to restore damaged or non-functional thymus tissue, or the tissue that makes up the organ responsible for producing immune cells.
-Kranus Health closed a $15 million Series A this month to aid in its mission to revolutionize the urology sector of healthcare. The company, cofounded by 2022 Under 30 Europe Science & Healthcare lister Nikolay Dimolarov, develops therapies and treatments for men’s health conditions. The funding will go toward continuing to build their app, which supports digital patients through the prescription and therapy processes, as well as expanding their offerings beyond Germany, where they’re currently based.
Read the full article here
