Celebrating our Impact: 2025 in Review 🎉

Inside this article: 

• BRITEbase & BRITEelevate wins 
• CXO Program wins 
• Developments within BRITE 

What a year at BRITE! Our startups scaled new technologies, sharpened strategies, and closed exits. Inside BRITE, we welcomed fresh perspectives, strengthened regional partnerships, and expanded our team to its largest yet. 

Through every shift and every breakthrough, one theme held true: when we center innovation and leverage the strength of our community, we unlock real impact for startups. 

Let’s look back at the biggest successes of 2025.

💡Startup Programs: Cultivating New Technologies 

Our programs serve over 100 founders of all stages, meeting them where they are with coaching, networking, and mentorship, preparing them to seek investment and advance towards commercialization. In 2025, BRITE graduated 24 total companies from its signature incubator and accelerator programs: BRITEbase and BRITEelevate. Want to take your big idea in energy to the next level? Join us here. 

2025 Highlights: 

• StormImpact was acquired by Urbint (now Itron), supporting the leading AI resiliency platform’s ability to predict utility vulnerabilities. 

• Edge Energy secured a $3.5 million corporate investment to scale and deploy its energy conversion for EV fast charging solution. 

• Sway Mobility launched a pilot program in Detroit, in collaboration with Mapless AI, for its remote-controlled EV carshare-as-a-service model. 

• MEVPAC, which stands for Mobile Electric Vehicle Power Access Container, piloted their rapidly deployable, bulk EV charging system in Louisville. 
  
• RootCycle won funding from Tech Growth Ohio to convert its autonomous transplanting system prototype to a functional pilot model. 

⚡CXO Program: Catalyzing Growth  

The CXO Program is BRITE’s fractional executive service helping growth-stage startups accelerate their path to customers and capital. Our team of 20+ expert CXOs provide embedded leadership in strategy, finance, operations, and more – complemented by an in-house Marketing Collective and venture relations function. Learn more about how BRITE’s CXOs can support your company here. 

2025 Highlights: 

• Power to Hydrogen won a €900k EU Development Fund Grant to support build-out of the world’s largest commercial AEM electrolysis stack in the Port of Antwerp-Bruges. 

• Octet Scientific completed a $2.1 million fundraising round to scale its non-lithium grid and stationary battery solution. 

• Nexceris successfully commercialized its Li-ion Tamer® off-gas sensor monitoring business for stationary energy storage through sale to Honeywell. 
  
• Accelerate Wind won a $1.25 million USAF contract to deploy a full-scale microgrid pilot of its edge of roof wind turbine technology. 

🚀 BRITE Energy Innovators: Centering Energy Innovation 

Everything we do at BRITE serves to accelerate novel energy technologies and support our network of advanced energy ecosystem partners throughout Ohio, Appalachia, and the broader Midwest. 2025 was a year of change at BRITE, but we’re strongly positioned to deepen and broaden our impact going forward.  

• In November, we warmly welcomed our new CEO, Jade Davis, who brings years of local, state, and federal policy and leadership expertise to BRITE. Jade succeeds Rick Stockburger, who stepped into the role of inaugural CEO at the Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation (FESI), the DOE’s first-ever independent agency-related foundation. We sincerely thank Rick and interim CEO, Jing Lyon, for their years of service to BRITE. 

• Shortly after joining BRITE, our CEO Jade Davis was celebrated as a 2025 Notable Leader in Sustainability by Crain’s Cleveland Business for his commitment to environmental, social, and economic stewardship. 

• BRITE’s Cleveland office officially moved into the Cleveland Foundation’s Midtown Collaboration Center, reaffirming our commitment to serving as the city’s energy innovation hub. 

• Three new Board of Directors appointees joined us in 2025, strengthening our leadership capacity at the national level. 
  
• BRITE and YBI celebrated a ribbon-tying ceremony, formalizing YBI’s management of our Warren headquarters and reaffirming our partnership to support entrepreneurship across the Mahoning Valley.

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