Helix Earth Technologies, Inc., (Helix Earth), a Houston-based hardware company at the forefront of clean tech solutions, announced today the successful close of its $5.6 million seed funding. The oversubscribed financing round was led by Veriten, the energy research, strategy, and investing firm, with participation from Anthropocene Ventures, Semilla Capital, and others including individual investors from prominent venture capital and private equity firms. Helix Earth’s seed round investors come from key innovation hubs including Silicon Valley, Boston, Houston, and Europe, and are united by a passion for practical innovation in the built environment, industrial, and CO2 capture sectors.
“This investment will empower the Helix Earth team to accelerate the development and deployment of our first groundbreaking hardware technology designed to disrupt a significant portion of the commercial air conditioning market, an industry that is ready for innovation,” said Rawand Rasheed, PhD, Helix Earth co-founder and CEO, and co-inventor of the NASA technology exclusively licensed to the company, which was spun out of Rice University and has been incubated at Greentown Labs in Houston since 2022.
Leveraging technology developed for NASA, this cost-effective, commercial air conditioner add-on technology, now in pilot phase, will save up to 50% of the net energy used in commercial air conditioning, a significant impact on both emissions and operating costs, with an expected unsubsidized payback in three years or less.
“The enthusiastic response from investors reinforces our team’s confidence in our ability to transform innovation-starved sectors such as commercial air conditioning with an easy-to-install-and-maintain solution that benefits distributors, mechanical contractors, and most of all, building owners, with a positive benefit to the environment,” Dr. Rasheed said.
Maynard Holt, Veriten’s founder and CEO, commented, “We couldn’t be more excited to partner with the Helix Earth team. We were so impressed with their unique combination of a technology with broad applicability across multiple industries, a product that will have an immediate and measurable impact on our energy system, and a fantastic and well-rounded team.”
