2026 DOE Boost Showcase

‍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 lab-developed energy technology and build a company around it.

Every cohort starts with the demand side. Boost runs community 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 with the potential to solve them.

Then, we recruit the entrepreneurs. Applications open nationally to businesspeople, operators, engineers, creatives, and commercially minded researchers. Selected entrepreneurs are matched to a technology and to each other, and every team is built to cover the ground a company needs: businesspeople, technologists, creatives, spokespeople, and a lab inventor who stays close as the technical anchor.

The result is ten companies built around advanced technology, aimed at solving real problems named by American communities. This year's cohort focused on...

Agenda

4:00 PM MT: Networking and community tables
5:00 PM MT: Pitches begin
6:00-7:30 PM MT: Reception and team tables

Livestream will be available from 5:00-7:30 PM MT.

<div anchor>2026 Focus States</div>

‍2026 Focus States

Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia.

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 lab-developed 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-developed technologies with teams already attached.
• Laboratory and university colleagues. This is what can happen to advanced technology after it leaves the bench.
• Economic development and ecosystem. A single evening with the deep tech community in one room.

Teams

‍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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