View the Cleantech Open Northeast 2025 Impact Report

LETTER FROM THE SENIOR DIRECTOR

2025 has been a year of change. Joe Curtatone handed over leadership of ACT to Trish Fields, who was part of our organization in the early days. We are energized by her leadership through challenging times. For the most part, cleantech innovation no longer has federal support.

We believe that the reduction in federal funding and the increased uncertainty across industries, markets, and geographies has meant that more startups than usual suspended operations, reduced personnel, had declining revenue, and had difficulty fundraising. With that said, Mike Holman offered some hope at the 2025 Cleantech Open Northeast Regional Finals. He explained that there are new challenges and opportunities: (a) Even if “cleantech” isn’t in vogue, there’s demand for resiliency, diversification, and energy cost reduction; (b) Startups can be much more agile than incumbents; and (c) Our region is a great jumping-off point.

Northeast teams swept the National Finals for the second year in a row: PolyGone Systems of NJ is the National Grand Prize Winner, Northeast Regional Winner, and Winner of the Water Prize sponsored by Xylem. HYDGEN of Canada is the National Runner Up and National People’s Choice. Teragen Energy of MA is a National Finalist and a Northeast Winner. The other Northeast Winners are EvoNatura of RI, which is also the Northeast People’s Choice, and Gamotech of Canada. In addition to PolyGone, the other specialty prize winners are Bluesonde of ME, which took the Ag/Food/Land Use Prize sponsored by the Sire Foundation, and Scaled Carbon of ME, the Winner of the Carbon Sequestration/CCUS prize sponsored by the Sire Foundation. $72,500 in cash prizes were awarded.

Linda Plano won the Lifetime Achievement Award. This recognition was long overdue; Linda has been a huge asset to the program since the beginning. Lead Mentors of the Year are Miles Flamenbaum and Rick Eno; Specialist Mentors of the Year are Richard Day, David Kelly, Ben Vaughan, and Joe Nangle;. Rookie Lead Mentors of the Year are Alison Harris, Anne Wolfson, Carolyn Day. and Arielle Cohen.

In conversations by Seed Consulting Group with Cleantech Open Northeast alumni startups, the following themes emerge when we ask what drives success: well-balanced teams, being rooted in supportive regional ecosystems, and protecting core innovations through patents. Over the past two decades, the Northeast program has supported over 681 startups that have gone on to build durable companies, create thousands of jobs, and attract meaningful follow-on capital. Recent cohorts also reflect a growing commitment to inclusive business strategies, with many teams led by founders from historically underserved communities. A large share of alumni remain active today or have successfully exited through acquisition. This is evidence that companies emerging from the program are built to last. Through innovation programs like Cleantech Open, founders are increasingly able to articulate and quantify their climate impact, with the most recent cohort estimating emissions reductions at a scale that underscores the economic significance of their solutions.

We are extremely grateful to all of our sponsors! Thank you especially to our state sponsors MassCEC, NYSERDA, and NJEDA & CSIT. Thank you to the Sire Foundation and Xylem for sponsoring specialty prizes, and to Foley Hoag and Dentons for hosting our major events in style. Congratulations to the Cleantech Open Northeast Class of 2025!

Sustainably,

Beth Zonis

Senior Director, Cleantech Open Northeast, ACT