As a result of his work at Argonne, Gary Ong, founder and CEO of Celandyne Technologies, is developing durable fuel cells for trucking and efficient electrolysis for green hydrogen production.
Gary Ong calls it “The Pivot.”
COVID-19 had ground the development of his innovative hydrogen fuel cell startup, Celadyne, to a halt — along with the rest of the global economy.
But while other high-tech startups scrambled and sweated (and burned through their seed funding) to survive, Ong and his team did not panic. Instead, they used the pause to methodically re-evaluate Celadyne’s product strategy.
“At that time, we were trying to create a hydrogen fuel cell that could perform at higher temperatures, provide more durability and generate less humidity,” recalled Ong. “We used the COVID pause to reach out to every potential customer we could identify and asked them which improvement was most important to them right now. They told us durability. So, we recalibrated our strategy so that we could go to market with a product that fit the current market need.”
“In other programs, you see a lot of emphasis on advancing a technology or building the company. At CRI, we see it more as investing in the people behind the innovations and behind the company. If we can meet their needs, we believe that the odds are better that the technology development and company-building will follow.” — CRI Director Dick Co
Why was Celadyne able to pivot instead of panic? Ong credits the company’s participation in Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI), a two-year fellowship program for clean-energy startups run by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.
“The financial and technical support we received from CRI gave us the time and resources to pinpoint the market need at that moment, recalibrate our approach and maximize the commercial viability of our product,” Ong explained. “We would have tried to go to market with the wrong product without it. And that would have set us back years.”
Instead of embarking on a false start, Celadyne raised $4.5M in its latest capital round in 2024.
A $650M innovator club
Celadyne’s success is just one of many that CRI has helped to enable. CRI innovators collectively have raised more than $650M in follow-on funding since the program began in 2016.
CRI innovators come from diverse sectors of the clean-energy innovation ecosystem. But all of them have one thing in common: They are pursuing transformative innovations to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. In doing so, they have faced many of the same obstacles.
These include exceptionally complex technical challenges, long development cycles and the need for expensive lab equipment. Add impatient investors to this mix, and you begin to understand why turning innovative energy technologies into profitable, market-transforming companies remains one of the most difficult economic feats.
Founder-focused support
Argonne and DOE recognized these challenges — and how critical it is to help solve them — so they designed CRI specifically to help the brightest innovators overcome them.
CRI provides innovators with a two-year runway to develop and scale their technologies while being supported through fellowship funding that covers salary, benefits and use of laboratory equipment and office space.
Through a partnership with mentor organizations (including the University of Chicago), CRI participants also get assistance developing business strategies, conducting market research, and finding long-term financing and potential commercial partners. Completing these tasks don’t always come easily to scientists.
Many of these components are common in so-called “incubator” programs, but CRI is unique in that it focuses on the needs of the scientists and innovators first.
“In other programs, you see a lot of emphasis on advancing a technology or building the company,” said CRI Director Dick Co. “At CRI, we see it more as investing in the people behind the innovations and behind the company. If we can meet their needs, we believe that the odds are better that the technology development and company-building will follow.”
It starts with the science
For many innovators, those needs start with achieving certainty around the science behind their technology. That certainty empowers them to pitch their product (and company) with confidence. Vetting of the technology from an institution of Argonne’s stature can also give them a leg up on other startups in the eyes of potential investors.
CRI helps founders achieve this certainty in two ways: mentorship from a dedicated Argonne scientist who is an expert in the founder’s field, and access to Argonne’s world-class facilities.
For Celadyne, that expert mentor was John Kopasz. Kopasz is a chemist in the Fuel Cell and Discovery Innovation group at Argonne. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field and specializes in the type of high-temperature membranes used in fuel cells like Celadyne’s.
“When Gary sent me the description of their technology, they were still focused primarily on creating a higher-temperature membrane,” recalled Kopasz. “I knew from my experience that it’s a problem people have been trying to solve for more than 20 years — without much success. I also knew that the market for fuel cells was shifting more toward commercial vehicles and heavy-duty uses, where durability is a priority. So, I was able to help Gary’s team see how they could solve durability much faster and more efficiently than temperature or humidity.”
Kopasz also connected the Celadyne team to people at Argonne who could help get the most out of the laboratory’s facilities.
“It would have cost Celadyne a million dollars to build a laboratory capable of the science we needed to conduct to get our technology where we needed it to be,” explained Ong. “We would have had to sell that much in equity to raise the funds to build it. Instead, we got those capabilities through Argonne.”
Building relationships that transcend technologies
While CRI focuses on meeting the needs of its innovative entrepreneurs, it also understands they cannot achieve success alone — especially in a sector as complex as clean energy.
Sustainable success requires a community behind it — a community built on strong relationships and shared benefits.
“We participated in a few accelerator programs early on,” said Ong. “But out of all of them, CRI really got the relationships part right. I still talk to John Kopasz every other week. He remains one of the most important people in the history of our company.”
Since graduating from CRI, Celadyne has continued to work with Kopasz and Argonne through a series of commissioned projects. For his part, Kopasz appreciates the opportunity to continue working with a company that shares his commitment to carbon reduction.
“It’s extremely energizing to work with young innovators who are so committed to getting the science that we develop here out into the world where it can solve our most pressing challenges,” he said.
In addition to continuing its work with Kopasz, Celadyne has also hired a number of Argonne postdoctoral researchers who assisted the company while it was part of CRI.
Finally, Ong says he still keeps in touch with other members of Celadyne’s CRI cohort — even though they don’t operate in the same sectors.
“Many of us still talk regularly,” he says. “We share experiences, we’ll share contacts that we may come across. I don’t do that with anyone from any of our other programs.”
Five companies were in Celadyne’s cohort in 2021, and 44 startup founders have participated through 2024. And while their ability to raise $650M-plus collectively in follow-on capital speaks to the success of CRI’s approach, it doesn’t tell the whole story, according to Co.
“For us, it’s about more than simply investing in technologies and assessing ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ based on dollars and cents,” Co explained. “CRI invests in people. We believe that building relationships between innovators and CRI’s network — from our scientists to our postdocs to our industry partners — benefits everyone involved. Those connections can transcend even the most innovative technologies by laying the groundwork for more to come.”
About CRI
Through a yearly competitive process, CRI awards two-year fellowships to innovators who focus on science and emerging energy technologies. CRI’s mission is to open Argonne’s door to deliver on the promise of a sustainable, prosperous and equitable world — one innovator, one startup at a time.
CRI is supported by the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies, Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization and Building Technologies offices in DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; the Advanced Scientific Computing Research and Basic Energy Sciences programs in DOE’s Office of Science; DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management; and by Argonne.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
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