What the National Lab System Can Do for Your Startup, and How DOE Boost Opens the Door

Moha Shahjamali came into FedTech’s DOE Boost Startup Studio differently than most participants. He already had a company, HidrogeniCs, built around existing technology. What he did not have was access to the national lab IP and researcher relationships that could strengthen it.

HidrogeniCs is working on a higher-value alternative to burning natural gas. Rather than burning it and releasing the carbon as CO2, the company decomposes it, keeping the carbon as solid materials and producing hydrogen in the process. Depending on process conditions, those solid carbon outputs can be graphite, carbon nanotubes, or, in some cases, graphene. At battery-grade or equivalent quality, those materials trade at roughly $20, $100, and $100,000 per kilogram, respectively. According to the US Geological Survey, the US produced no natural graphite domestically in 2023 and remained 100% reliant on imports as of 2024, making domestic production from natural gas a meaningful secondary benefit of the approach.

Through DOE Boost, Moha and his co-founders identified IP from Idaho National Lab that complemented the technology HidrogeniCs already had. That led to direct conversations with the inventors, a licensing agreement, and an ongoing R&D collaboration. His team has since submitted two joint grant proposals with Idaho National Lab to federal funding agencies.

Since completing DOE Boost, HidrogeniCs was accepted into Chain Reaction Innovations, a two-year DOE fellowship program embedded at Argonne National Laboratory. Fellows receive funding, access to Argonne's research facilities and equipment, and hands-on guidance from Argonne staff scientists.

"Some of the instruments we plan to use at Argonne cost a couple of million dollars," Moha said. "It is impossible for us as a smaller startup to even think about renting them." Over the next two years, he and his team will use that access to validate the technology and begin scaling it up alongside Argonne staff scientists.

Thanks in large part to that access which enabled advancement of HidrogeniCs’ mission,, the company has raised over $1 million through a combination of equity and non-dilutive funding. For founders looking to follow a similar path, Moha was direct about what matters most: take the IP selection process seriously. Moha and his team spent several days evaluating each available technology before committing, looking for fit with what HidrogeniCs already had rather than starting from scratch. He also pointed to adaptability and resilience as the qualities that matter most for founders coming out of a technical background. Business skills take time to build, and some of the hardest problems, technical and commercial, can take years to work through.

DOE Boost exists to give founders a clearer path through the federal commercialization system. That means access to national lab IP, direct relationships with the scientists behind it, and a network of funding mechanisms and facilities that most early-stage companies cannot reach on their own. Moha's trajectory from existing company to national lab licensee to Chain Reaction fellow is the kind of outcome the program is designed to produce, and it is available to founders who may not be starting from scratch.

Applications for the 2026 cohort are open through June 26. The program is run by FedTech in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories and the Department of Energy's Office of Technology Commercialization.

Apply at https://www.fedtech.io/startup-studios/doe-boost