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Ten teams, 18 weeks, six advanced energy verticals. On December 9th, each one presents the company it built around a national lab energy technology.
About DOE Boost
DOE Boost is an 18 week advanced energy startup studio led by Sandia National Laboratories and powered by FedTech, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy Technology Commercialization Fund. Ten teams each take a national lab energy technology and build a company around it.
Every cohort starts with the demand side. Boost runs community energy challenge workshops in a set of focus states each year to find the energy and infrastructure problems those communities are actually living with. Those findings become the year's technology verticals, and the labs are then searched for technology that answers them.
2026 Focus States
Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia.
2026 Technology Verticals
Advanced Energy Production and Resource Security
Advanced Materials
Advanced Nuclear and Domestic Energy Resources
Energy Efficiency
Geothermal Energy
Grid Modernization and Resilience
Why Attend
- Real challenges, met with advanced technology. Every technology on stage answers an energy or infrastructure problem a community named.
- The full arc in one evening. Community challenge, to national lab technology, to a company with a customer in mind. Ten times over.
- Investors, licensees and corporate partners. Early, direct access to ten de-risked lab technologies with teams already attached.
- Laboratory and university colleagues. This is what happens to a technology after it leaves the bench.
- Economic development and ecosystem. A single evening with the deep tech community in one room.
Past Participants
HidrogeniCs (2025)
Selected for DOE's Chain Reaction Innovations program, 1 of 5 from more than 900 applicants. Collaborating with 3 national labs.
Canary Instruments (2025)
Secured an R&D license with Jefferson Lab
PeraWatt (2024)
NSF STTR Phase 1 award 2528417. Co-founders selected as Activate and Cyclotron Road Fellows at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
GridFlow (2023)
Sandia-licensed patent application 17/740,128 for its lithium-sulfur flow battery. Active DOE Office of Electricity partnership.
Conquiro (2023)
Prototype deploying at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Closed first outside investment.
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