Ten start-ups selected for Equinor’s energy accelerator program

Norway’s Equinor has announced the inaugural class of global start-up companies selected to participate in the Techstars Energy Accelerator.

The ten start-up companies have been selected from hundreds of applicants across 38 countries, Equinor said on Thursday.

Accepted companies receive up to $120,000, the full program and access to the Techstars and partner networks. They will seek to accelerate their development through an intensive 13-week program, tapping into a global network of experts from Equinor and Techstars as well as the partnering companies Kongsberg and McKinsey & Company, Equinor explained.

Al Cook, Equinor’s executive vice president for Global Strategy & Business Development, commented: “We are excited and privileged to welcome these companies to the first Techstars Energy accelerator. We in Equinor are proud of our technology leadership in the energy sector. But we also recognize that the pace of innovation is speeding up. Energy sources and markets are transforming – becoming smarter, cheaper and cleaner. That is why we look forward to learning from the best, brightest and boldest to test new ideas and find new solutions to the world’s energy needs.”

Demo Day

The selected companies represent solutions within oil and gas, new business models, digitalisation and renewables. At the end of the program in December, they will present their solutions to Equinor, the partners and other potential investors at a Demo Day.

Christian Møller, CTO in Kongsberg Digital, said: “Our Techstars partnership and the Techstars Energy Accelerator is a great match for Kongsberg. The Accelerator’s ambition to use knowledge sharing, innovation and digitalization as means to provide new and improved solutions to the energy sector matches ours. Our great advantage is that we are able to draw on a long history of technology innovations and experience with developing digital industrial solutions to the industry. We want the smartest start-ups in the sector to benefit from that advantage too. In this way, we will build great partnerships, more synergies and opportunities for everyone involved.”

Audun Abelsnes, Managing Director for Techstars Energy, stated: “This unique partnership between a leading energy company like Equinor and Techstars, together with partners KONGSBERG and McKinsey & Company, provides a great opportunity for companies that aspire to shape the future of energy. These ten start-ups now get the opportunity to gain traction through deep mentor engagement, rapid iteration cycles and fundraising preparation. We are excited to get started and help more entrepreneurs succeed.”

The accelerator is hosted at Equinor’s Oslo offices with access to Norway’s world-class energy-technology industry. Norway is the 8th largest exporter of oil, the 3rd largest exporter of gas in the world, and Norway itself is run on 97% renewable energy sources.

The 10 start-ups

Ampaire, USA. Ampaire is making flying accessible to more people from more airports by building electric aircraft that are greener, quieter, and less costly to operate.

Crux OCM, Canada. Crux OCM utilizes AI and real-time optimization to enable semi-autonomous operation of pipelines, reducing the risk of operation and increasing volumetric throughput up to 4%.

DeepStream, UK. The tech enabled tendering and supplier pre-qualification platform for oil & gas businesses.

Interface Fluidics, Canada. Interface Fluidics’ proprietary nanofluidic platform provides rapid lab testing that empowers the energy industry to understand how their chemicals perform, 100x faster and with more detail.

Opus 12, USA. Converting CO2 into fuel and valuable products, the technology will contain the CO2 converting power of 37.000 trees in the volume of a suitcase.

RatedPower, Spain. RatedPower provides pvDesign, a cloud-based software to design large-scale solar power plants worldwide, in just a few minutes.

SafeEx, Denmark. SafeEx’s software digitizes inspection and maintenance and saves their customers 25-40% on manpower.

Sensytec, USA. Sensytec is developing a smart cement technology based on a proprietary additive to help companies enhance cement integrity by monitoring cement conditions near real-time.

Versor, Norway. Versor makes drone autonomy software for end-to-end infrastructure inspections, enabling AI-driven data capture and automatic fault detection across industrial applications.

Voyager, USA. Voyager is a cloud-based data hub helping the commodity shipping industry enhance decision making, automate processes and connect systems.