Perseus was also backed early by Roadrunner Fund and incubated by Roadrunner Venture Studios, the nation’s first venture studio focused on deep technology company creation. Perseus Materials has closed a strategic investment for an undisclosed amount from Lockheed Martin, one of the largest defense technology companies in the world. The announcement reinforces what the East Tennessee entrepreneurial
Perseus Materials, a venture-backed startup building the world’s fastest large-scale manufacturing system for composite parts, today announced the closure of a strategic investment by Lockheed Martin. Founded in 2022 by Stanford researchers, Perseus will begin expanding its team, fulfill its first customer orders, and grow its physical footprint. “We’re not interested in making marginal improvements
Witching Hour, a hard tech startup and member of Cohort 2025 of Innovation Crossroads, is wielding the support of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop technology that reduces wildfire risk by retrofitting powerlines with insulation in fire-prone areas. ORNL is the site of the Powerline Conductor Accelerated Testing Facility, one of the only
Batteries power everything from cellphones to medical devices to defense systems. In 2021, Ateios Systems licensed technology from Oak Ridge National Laboratory to make battery manufacturing faster and cheaper—an innovation that now underpins the nation’s only domestic battery electrode supply chain, strengthening both economic and national security. Ateios Systems has continued to build on ORNL’s initial innovation, establishing
Qubit Engineering, part of the 2023 Innovation Crossroads cohort at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, recently launched Neuro-Grid, a computational tool that uses artificial intelligence for real-time, high-accuracy analysis of the power grid to offer insights not available through classical computing. Qubit leveraged Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer housed at ORNL’s Oak Ridge
When Evan Stacy was knee-deep in his Ph.D. program at the University of Southern Mississippi, a side project evolved into tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in carbon fiber production. Today, he’s commercializing that technology through the Innovation Crossroads program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Innovating in Square One When carbon fiber is produced, step one of the process is
Shift Thermal, part of the 2017 Innovation Crossroads cohort at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has partnered with the city of Oak Ridge to launch their thermal energy storage system, FLEX, at the Oak Ridge Civic Center.
Launch Tennessee today announced the 32 companies selected for its FY26 SBIR/STTR Matching Fund, marking a historic milestone as the program surpasses $1 billion in total economic impact – measured through follow-on capital raised, additional grants leveraged, and wages generated across the State of Tennessee. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology
The founder Justin Nussbaum said Ascend was selected to work on a top-secret project with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to manufacture small, complex parts. What if you could print thousands of complex parts in a single day, using materials no one else can? That’s the challenge Justin Nussbaum set out to solve. Several major issues plague