On Wednesday evening, the inaugural Raleigh-Durham Climate Week’s designated “Founder Skills” day wrapped up with a social showcase at Raleigh Founded. While the event served in part as a networking opportunity wrapping up a day filled with presentations and panel discussions, it also provided an opportunity for attendees to interact with some of the most interesting climate startups from the Triangle area.
Founders and teams from six such startups were on hand to share their stories and show off their solutions—covering everything from pollutant removal, to efficient EV charging, to construction material made from waste.
Spoiler alert: GrepBeat will share these startups’ full stories in the near future. But in the meantime, here’s a first look at what they’re all doing, as well as some of the founders’ own words concerning lessons learned, marrying mission to business case, and what they’d like you to remember about what they’re up to.
Jump to:
• AmpOn
• Ceretune
• Innatrix
• Sustaera
• TidalCleanse
• Trashy
Startup: AmpOn
Co-Founders: Monica Irudayaraj, Madan Morris
The Pitch: AmpOn helps businesses add more EV charging within existing electrical capacity, reducing the need for costly upgrades. As one accountable partner from planning through operations, they make deployment affordable and turnkey, while building toward grid integration that expands charging capacity at sites and delivers flexibility to the grid.
Irudayaraj on what she’s learned about building in the climate space in North Carolina in 2026:
I’ve learned that the AI era is changing what a small climate startup can accomplish. Founded in North Carolina in 2026, AmpOn is AI-native from day one. AI is embedded in how we build, test, and release products, helping us move features into production in days. Combined with our team’s decades of software and electrical engineering experience, that gives us the ability to learn quickly and turn customer feedback into working solutions.
But the biggest lesson is that climate innovation has to make adoption practical. Businesses want EV charging, yet electrical capacity, upgrade costs, and deployment complexity can hold them back. We’re applying that speed to help them add more charging within the power they already have, with one accountable partner from planning through operations.
Building in North Carolina puts us close to businesses facing these challenges and a strong research and energy ecosystem. The opportunity is to connect AI-driven development with real-world engineering to make sustainable infrastructure more accessible.
On AmpOn’s mission and business case:
Our purpose is simple: People should feel confident going electric because they know where they can charge.
That mission became personal after I bought my Tesla Model X in 2021. I loved driving electric, but for my coworker who lived in an apartment, the journey from wanting an EV to owning one came with a difficult tradeoff: everyday time commitment to wherever charging was available. His experience made something clear to me: People need dependable charging where life already happens: at home, at work, and at everyday destinations.
The business case is making that infrastructure financially practical for property owners. Electrical upgrades and deployment complexity can make charging difficult to justify. AmpOn’s dynamic load management adjusts charging around building demand, helping sites add more chargers within existing electrical capacity and potentially defer costly upgrades. We bring planning, hardware, software, installation, and operations together through one accountable partner.
Customers gain an amenity that can attract and retain residents, employees, and guests, with opportunities to earn charging revenue. AmpOn earns revenue through hardware and deployment services, alongside recurring software and network management fees. Lease and revenue-sharing options can also lower customers’ upfront investment.
For us, mission and business viability reinforce each other: making charging easier to afford and operate helps more properties offer it, giving more people the confidence to choose electric.
On what people should remember about AmpOn:
I’d like them to remember this: AmpOn makes it easier and more affordable for businesses and property owners to bring EV charging to the places people already live, work, and visit.
We combine an intelligent technology platform with turnkey delivery, bringing planning, hardware, software, installation, and operations together through one accountable partner. By making smarter use of existing electrical capacity, we help customers reduce the need for costly upgrades.
Our purpose is simple: people should feel confident going electric because they know where they can charge.
Startup: Ceretune
Founder: Reid Barnett
The Pitch: Ceretune has developed a technology which allows governments, engineering firms, and pond managers to remove pollutants directly from the environment while staying under budget.
Barnett on what he’s learned about building in the climate space in North Carolina in 2026:
It is important to be efficient with capital and build sustainably.
On Ceretune’s mission and business case:
We are trying to remediate the watersheds which support and feed the worlds oceans, and are trying to do so by producing more value from the removal than the system costs, effectively getting pollutants to pay for their own removal.
On what people should remember about Ceretune:
We are designing around the full lifecycle of our technology to not just solve the problem of pollution, but also to align it with human nature.
Startup: Innatrix Inc.
Founder: Jiarui Li
The Pitch: Innatrix built a unique AI-assisted platform to create eco-friendly biopesticides to address some of the critical disease and nematode issues in agriculture.
Li on what he’s learned about building in the climate space in North Carolina in 2026:
When people outside the region think of climate tech, they often default to direct air capture hardware, EV infrastructure, or speculative carbon offset registries. But in the Research Triangle and broader North Carolina, climate tech is fundamentally driven by soil, biology, and biomanufacturing.
On Innatrix’s mission and business case:
At Innatrix, our mission is to replace harsh chemical sprays with clean, biological solutions that protect food crops while keeping our soil and water healthy.
The business case is straightforward: Old chemical pesticides are failing as pests become resistant to them, and governments are banning them. By using smart AI tools, we discover natural, effective alternatives much faster and cheaper than traditional chemical giants—giving farmers a drop-in product that protects their harvest and saves them money.
On what people should remember about Innatrix:
The single most memorable takeaway is that Innatrix proves farmers never have to compromise between protecting their yields and protecting the planet.
Startup: Sustaera
Co-Founders: Cory Sanderson, Ben Gardner
The Pitch: Sustaera’s breakthrough Direct Air Capture technology enables 3-5x lower-cost carbon removal.
Sanderson on what he’s learned about building in the climate space in North Carolina in 2026:
Fundraising is very difficult if you aren’t AI.
On Sustaera’s mission and business case:
Mission with business case: Be the leading supplier of direct air capture equipment by offering the lowest-cost solution, enabling 500 million tonnes (0.5 gigatonnes) of CO2 removed by 2040.
On what people should remember about Sustaera:
Low cost, durable carbon removal is possible for a sustainable, abundant future.
Startup: TidalCleanse
Co-Founders: Hiyaa Rathod, Ling Xiong (who painted that awesome logo)
The Pitch: TidalCleanse is developing chemical extraction processes to turn sargassum, the seaweed that piles up on Caribbean beaches, into high-value skincare ingredients sold B2B.
Rathod on what she’s learned about building in the climate space in North Carolina in 2026:
As a student founder in North Carolina, I’ve learned that choosing the next question matters as much as finding someone who can answer it.
TidalCleanse touches marine science, chemistry, hospitality, and cosmetics, and each field sees a different part of the problem. We have to connect them; a hotel’s collection schedule affects how fresh our seaweed is, which affects processing and ultimately what an ingredient buyer receives. Building the company means making those decisions work together.
On TidalCleanse’s mission and business case:
Our mission is to give coastal communities a productive destination for sargassum they already need to remove. Our proposed model combines disposal fees from hotels with ingredient sales to cosmetic manufacturers.
The opportunity is that the same material carries a removal cost for one customer and potential value for another. Our job is to make the processing between them reliable and economical.
On what people should remember about TidalCleanse:
A beach cleanup happens again with the next arrival of seaweed. We want to build a reason (and a revenue stream) to keep doing it. TidalCleanse is about making the value recovered from sargassum help support the ongoing work of managing it.
Startup: Trashy
Founder: Laura Olson
The Pitch: Trashy makes award-winning, high-performance concrete products and materials from waste. Our mixes can be 30% lighter or 4x stronger than conventional concrete, helping designers and builders solve practical challenges while turning discarded materials like Styrofoam and glass into something valuable.
Olson on what she’s learned about building in the climate space in North Carolina in 2026:
I’ve learned that a climate mission can open the door, and you have to provide value in a unique way. Customers still need a material that performs, makes financial sense, and fits how they already design and build.
In North Carolina, we’ve found real value in connecting local waste streams to projects to make that case tangible. For example, using student move-in waste for outdoor furniture at NC State. I’ve also learned that people are generous and want to help.
On Trashy’s mission and business case:
Trashy turns waste materials like expanded polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) and glass into high-performance concrete for architectural products and building applications. Our mission is to keep valuable materials out of landfills and put them into the built environment.
The business case is performance: Our foam-based concrete can be significantly lighter than conventional concrete while having exceptional strength, and our glass-based mix can reach very high strengths and be lower carbon. That can help the architecture and design communities address weight, structural support, and design constraints while creating useful products from materials that would otherwise be discarded.
On what people should remember about Trashy:
Trashy makes both award-winning concrete products and innovative high-performance materials. It all just happen to be made from waste.
