Featured Company: FastCAP Systems

 

When MassCEC first spoke with FastCAP about making an investment in the company in early December 2009, the company consisted of one researcher working out of a lab at MIT. Since that time, MassCEC has seen FastCAP transition into a new research and development facility in South Boston and develop into a family of twenty full and part time engineers, advisors, staff and student interns, including one intern from MassCEC’s Clean Energy Internship Opportunity program. 

 

FastCAP was born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where the company’s CEO and Principle Researcher, Dr. Riccardo Signorelli, spent six years co-designing and co-developing the company’s transformative energy storage technology: a nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitor that is less expensive, and offers greater power densities, similar energy densities and millions more charge cycles when compared to traditional batteries. The technology has the potential to dramatically decrease the cost of hybrid electric vehicles as well as grid-scale energy storage for renewable technologies.   

 

In October 2009, FastCAP was a recipient in the first round of the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) grant program for potentially transformative research and innovation in clean energy technology. Out of the 123 grants made throughout the four rounds of awards, 16 Massachusetts institutions and companies received a total of $62.8 million. In the first round of 37 awards – made to companies with particularly transformative technologies – six Massachusetts companies received a total of $33.3 million, or 16 percent of the total awards and 22 percent of the total dollars awarded. FastCAP received more than $5 million.

 

Upon the announcement of the first-round of ARPA-E awards, MassCEC recognized a promising opportunity to leverage state resources with both federal and private dollars to support clean energy technology development in Massachusetts. In turn, MassCEC offered each of the six first-round ARPA-E awardees with matching funds totaling $1.35 million, including a $300,000 award to FastCAP. 

 

“It was the perfect marriage,” said Signorelli of MassCEC’s investment and interest in his company. Signorelli said that there was mutual understanding on both sides of the discussion leading up to investment. “It has been a smooth relationship from the beginning, and a rewarding one for FastCAP” he said. 

 

In order to further assist the company in establishing its presence in MassachusettsMassCEC connected FastCAP with the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) in December 2009 to help find a location for the company’s headquarters. The BRA assisted FastCAP in attaining an affordable property at the Bronstein Center in downtown Boston. With the move, FastCAP transformed from a 500 square-foot office to a 17,000 square-foot research and development facility. The facility’s location, coined by Boston’s Mayor Menino as Boston’s Innovation District, is the location of a burgeoning clean technology cluster, which offers a “healthy collaborative environment” for the growth of FastCAP, Signorelli says.

 

“The value of MassCEC goes way beyond the dollar investment,” said Signorelli. “It brings to the table a number of opportunities that would otherwise be difficult to have access to, such as obtaining a facility on a start-up budget, and making connections with local players in the industry. “