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Tech Topics In This Article: CleanTech startups, accelerators
Five new startups are setting up shop in Atlanta to participate in the first iteration of the Cox Cleantech Accelerator.
The accelerator, which is housed inside Atlanta’s Ponce City Market and run through a partnership with Cox Enterprises, gener8tor, and the Georgia Cleantech Innovation Hub, is designed to provide up-and-coming founders with “capital, expertise and connections” needed to grow in the ever-evolving cleantech industry.
Meet The 1st Accelerator Class
The first cohort includes startups working on some of the most pressing climate and energy-related problems, including fleet electrification, financial compliance, industrial wastewater, and sustainable building.
The five startups include:
4Earth (Atlanta, Georgia)
4Earth builds advanced resource recovery technology for industrial and critical infrastructure applications. Utilizing materials science, innovative water treatment processes, automation, and machine learning, the technology is designed to seamlessly plug into existing factories and plants to enhance efficiency and sustainability. Hypepotamus previous covered 4Earth in 2021.
Joulea (Atlanta, Georgia)
Joulea empowers building owners with highly accurate energy assessments to optimize financial performance and reduce carbon impact. Leveraging AI, drone technology and deep expertise in building energy systems, Joulea delivers data-driven insights for greater efficiency and sustainability.
Flux Hybrids (Charlotte, North Carolina)
Flux Hybrids designs electric powertrains that transform fleet vehicles into plug-in hybrids, maximizing efficiency and flexibility. The startup allow fleets to operate on electric power when charging is available and transition to gas as needed, delivering increased range, enhanced performance and reduced operational costs. Read more about Flux Hybrids on Hypepotamus here.
Accelerate Wind (St. Louis, Missouri)
Accelerate Wind produces affordable energy for commercial buildings with a wind turbine that integrates with solar on the edges of roofs. Accelerate’s patented spoiler design channels wind to the turbine more efficiently, harnessing more energy within a smaller footprint.
Kara (New York, New York)
Kara is the AI sustainability compliance platform transforming how investors and businesses manage sustainability risk. Built for asset managers, banks and companies, Kara streamlines sustainability performance, automates compliance with SFDR, CSRD, EU Taxonomy, EDCI, and SB 253 & 261, and delivers actionable insights that turn sustainability from a regulatory burden into a strategic advantage. By embedding sustainability at the core of finance, Kara empowers capital to drive both prosperity and resilience, ensuring compliance is not just a requirement but a catalyst for smarter, more sustainable growth.
The State of CleanTech
The cleantech sector finds itself at a crossroads in 2025, as founders and investors alike are dealing with a sense of “whiplash and uncertainty” as the new Trump administration has been “clawing back cleantech funding, rolling back tax credits, and generally dismantling the Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)” at the national level, according to Cox Cleantech Accelerator’s Managing Director Miguel Granier.
“The Biden Administration’s clean energy-focused funding and tax incentives put cleantech innovation in high gear, while the current Administration has not only slammed on the brakes, but is taking off the wheels and pulling out the motor,” Granier told Hypepotamus. “Political volatility only benefits traders, so long-term investors will get more conservative, and that always makes funding capital-intensive businesses difficult, and many cleantech businesses are capital-intensive.”
Despite the volatility, Granier believes Southeast-based cleantech startups are “better poised” to survive national uncertainty.
“Our market, in general, is more enterprise and revenue-oriented than most, so we still see commercial value driving startup funding.”
Why Cleantech Now
Even with uncertainty, the organizations supporting Atlanta’s new accelerator see strong opportunities in the cleantech space.
“The advancement in AI is revolutionizing key cleantech sectors, such as battery testing, grid management, and energy efficiency. Cleantech innovators, already known for their disruptive spirit, have a huge opportunity now to leverage cutting-edge AI tools to further their competitive edge over conventional energy sources and established practices, creating fertile ground for innovation and disruption,” Katherine Pemberton, Manager of Cox Cleantech Strategy & Investments, told Hypepotamus. “We also realize that shifting the economy towards clean energy will take time, so we will see ups and downs along the way, but we believe in the potential and want to be a part of making a cleaner, more sustainable future.”
Pemberton added that the Cox Cleantech team is particularly interested in investing in circularity, building energy efficiency, ESG software, and renewable energy development.
Ryan Jeffery, gener8tor’s Senior Managing Director, echoed the positive and optimistic sentiment regarding the cleantech sector’s potential.
“There’s significant momentum in cleantech right now, driven by increasing corporate sustainability commitments, policy support, and technological advancements that are making sustainable solutions more cost-effective than ever. This accelerator comes at an opportune time, particularly with Cox Enterprises as our corporate partner, having already invested over $2 billion in sustainable technologies since 2007,” added Jeffrey. “Through our collaboration with the Georgia Cleantech Innovation Hub, we’re well-positioned to help innovative startups scale their solutions and contribute to Atlanta’s growing reputation as a cleantech leader.”
What Startups Can Expect From The New Accelerator
The new Cleantech accelerator program is a twelve-week program, where each of the five startups will receive a $100,000 investment. The teams will also receive “mentorship from Cox business leaders, access to industry leaders and support with landing pilots or commercial agreements,” according to a press release.
“What success looks like will vary for each company, but a rule of thumb is that we want them to feel comfortable about their funding path and we want them to have a strong pipeline of commercial opportunities,” Morgan Phillips, Atlanta Ventures Lead at Cox, told Hypepotamus. “We also want them to feel well-connected to Atlanta’s venture ecosystem and feel like they have all of the resources they need to scale locally.”
On the Gener8tor side, Jeffrey added that he hopes the startups selected for this first cohort will “[tap] into everything Atlanta’s ecosystem has to offer.”
“Success means connecting them with our regional network of corporate partners, industry experts, and fellow innovators, while facilitating pilot projects with major customers,” said Jeffrey. “Atlanta is becoming a real powerhouse for cleantech, and we want our startups to be able to take full advantage of these opportunities while contributing to the region’s growing reputation as a cleantech hub.”
