The Department of Energy (DOE) and Small Business Administration (SBA) are looking to connect private capital with emerging technologies deemed critical to the nation’s energy and technology priorities through a new investment initiative.
“We’re thinking holistically. We’re thinking about how to get technology out of the labs into the marketplace,” Rima Oueid, DOE’s senior commercialization executive for quantum and space, said at the Quantum World Congress in College Park, Md., on Sept. 25.
“We’re trying to translate basically deep tech to human deployment,” she added.
The Small Business Investment Company-Energy (SBIC-E) Initiative combines DOE’s technical and commercialization expertise with SBA’s Small Business Investment Company program. The SBIC program has $58 billion in combined portfolio value, according to DOE.
The initiative is intended to help promising technologies move from development to commercialization by encouraging investment funds to focus on technology areas identified by DOE as strategic priorities.
Oueid said that artificial intelligence, quantum information science, semiconductors, and future computing are among the initial priority areas.
“We want to be able to cover everything from early-stage technology to helping folks figure out how to scale some of this technology,” Oueid said.
In a recent interview with MeriTalk, Anthony Pugliese, DOE’s chief commercialization officer and director of the Office of Technology Commercialization, explained that the program provides government-backed financing to private investment funds, increasing the capital to invest in qualifying U.S. small businesses.
Pugliese said the program could potentially turn a $50 million private investment into $150 million in capital for a startup or small business, helping companies access the funding they need to scale.
“I think if we are really serious about beating some of our adversarial countries and winning the AI race and doing all this amazing stuff, it’s going to require innovation and access to cheap capital,” Pugliese said. “This is one of those tools that we’re really excited about.”
The initiative also supports investment opportunities involving companies participating in DOE’s commercialization and innovation ecosystem, including the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs.