Archive for category: News

Aerogel the World!

After three intense years of research, innovation, and passion, we are ready for an important step – a new brand and mission statement!

When we founded aerogel-it in 2021, we knew the road ahead would not be easy. Building a deep-tech company with high capital requirements is a challenge. But we were convinced: Aerogel has much wider scope than previously thought. And we were right.

We have not just improved existing aerogel materials with their various drawbacks. We have also created the first bio-based aerogels for applications that were previously unimaginable. Aerogels can be everywhere.

At the same time, we completely reimagined aerogel production. Our goal: to develop the best manufacturing technology — sustainable, efficient, and affordable. In our pilot plant, this vision has become reality.

And this is just the beginning on our journey. We felt this was the right moment to redefine our brand but also to sharpen our mission. In a nutshell, we want to leverage our leading aerogel expertise to provide new solutions for global problems, foremost the climate change and decarbonization – and we are in it for the long run. A huge thank you to our partner Nikias Thörner from BYNIK, who has taken our brand communication to the next level.

Our mission: “Global, active climate protection for everyone, every day.”

And the best part? Our new website will be live in just a few days! Stay tuned— we are excited to have you on this journey with us.

Last week the aerogel-it team was thrilled to receive Toni Suomäki, Geir Harris and their colleagues of the new Beerenberg Advanced Solutions team at Hamburg University of Technology. Beerenberg has recently bundled innovative products and solutions such as robotics and aerogels in this global business unit to maximize synergies and push innovative topics.

To kick it off, the team took the Beerenberg colleagues on a deep dive into aerogel technology and highlighted the improvements that the aerogel-it team has achieved over the last years regarding aerogel product and process technology: The team developed completely new aerogel products that address current shortcomings of aerogels but also open up new areas of application. And with the new step-change production tech, much higher efficiency and lower cost are achieved. Over the following days, the team then discussed deeper collaboration regarding the Oryza silica aerogel blanket technology as well as the aerogel-it aerogel particle technology.

Both companies see enormous potential in aerogel materials and the solutions they can provide across a wide range of industries and applications. To name one example: The Oryza silica aerogel products offer excellent, space- and energy-saving performance while achieving highest Fire Class A1 – as certified by a German ETA for the Construction industry. We see this as an important contribution to the much-needed energetic renovation of the European building stock.

The Beerenberg visit was rounded off with a tour of the pilot plant where Alberto demonstrated the worldwide largest quantity of our new biomineral aerogel particles! With this silica/biopolymer hybrid material, we are reinventing silica aerogel technology: excellent aerogel performance with highly improved handling, a great sustainability footprint and what is best – at competitive cost. We are looking forward to sharing more details soon – stay tuned!

We are happy to announce that aerogel-it received a special mention award for particularly innovative solutions as part of the Vonovia Construction Contest!

We are extremely grateful and honored to have been considered next to the winners Kimm GmbH & Co. KG and STRAMENTEC GmbH as well the other special mention award to Bton Group. Thank you very much to the Vonovia team and congratulations to everyone!

Vonovia is a huge player in the European real estate market and owns more than 540.000 apartments. The Vonovia team was particularly impressed by the options our new aerogel materials offer regarding energetic renovation of the existing building stock – a challenge they are facing.

And energetic renovation is urgently needed. Around 40% of EU energy is used for buildings, but 75% of the buildings in the EU have poor energy performance (see here). Energetically more efficient buildings require less energy to heat and cool, which reduces CO2 emissions and helps to reduce the size and cost of heating and cooling equipment such as heat pumps. Less energy used means less energy that needs to be provided in the first place.

Aerogels are attractive as space-saving option especially for interior insulation where the available space is highly limited. However, current aerogel materials are costly and have high CO2 footprints. aerogel-it is developing aerogel materials and aerogel production technology to lower cost and CO2 footprint such as our aerogels from the wood side-stream lignin or from cellulose. We also market SLENTITE, still the best-performing interior insulation board available.

And we do not stop there. Together with our partners, we are working on ready-to-use solutions based on our new aerogel materials to tackle the challenges the Construction industry faces.

Photos: Vonovia, Dirk Weinrich

This week Marc and Dirk participated in the STEP USA GreenTech Program hosted in New York by the German American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. (GACC-NY). We joined a great line-up of GreenTech companies with Lignopure , carbonauten GmbH, HighLine Technology GmbH, fior familie GmbH, Cleancopter, Apollo Green Solutions and keywood GmbH.

We were truly blown away by the quality and intensity of the program led by Victoria Kaeser of GACC-NY and Brian Frumberg of VentureOut and hosted at multiple breathtaking locations throughout Manhattan:

• GACC-NY CEO Susanne Gellert and team supported by Brian provided valuable insights into cultural, organizational and legal aspects surrounding the expansion to the US and specifically New York.

• Anne-Sophie Mahle of EDCNYC and Carin Rising of ESD shared current GreenTech programs and support mechanisms relevant to businesses wanting to come to NYC and NY. Numerous projects provide collaboration possibilities as well as opportunities for startups to highlight their technologies in pilots within NYC. Also, sustainability goals of NYC were discussed.

• Jeannette Williams and Steph Jones of the NYU Urban Future Lab presented activities around climate tech such as the ACRE Incubator.

• Christian Joerg and team highlighted opportunities offered by the German Accelerator.

• The amazing Jennifer Louie of Closed Loop Partners discussed some of the inner workings of investing approaches and also how new investment vehicles are developed to address current shortcomings e.g. for capex-heavy projects.

• IP attorney and business angel Ray Farrell took up the tough task of explaining critical points surrounding IP in general and in the US specifically – absolutely crucial and often underestimated.

• Matt Lopez of Revenue Nomad / formerly Skaled shared some of his extensive expertise on structuring sales processes to maximize revenue generation – which sometimes does get overlooked amongst the day to day challenges of a startup.

• Brian expertly coached the startups to crystallize our offerings into 2-minute pitches – which many of them would not have believed to be possible. This training culminated in a pitch event at the Goethe Institute, where the startups pitched to a panel of investor experts as well as a crowd of 100+ guests. Throughout the evening, there were lively discussions and many great connections were made – all in a vibrant atmosphere!

• After sessions, the group also had the chance to bond over Mexican food and drinks at Mezcali restaurant. And not to forget the fun visit to Pete’s Tavern to celebrate the conclusion of the pitch night.

For Marc and Dirk, the STEP USA program truly opened up a whole new perspective. They highly appreciated learning about GACC-NY as a strong partner for future expansion into the US. aerogel-it is highly grateful to N-Bank for supporting us and to GACC-NY for giving us the chance to be part of this journey.