Hydrogen might be touted as a fuel of the future that stands ready to decarbonize shipping and industry, but for the 90 million metric tons used today in everything from fertilizer production and chemical manufacturing, 96% is derived directly from natural gas, oil, or coal. For instance, one of the most common ways is through steam reformation of methane, which basically cooks methane so the hydrogen falls off, releasing carbon dioxide in the process.
That means there’s plenty of room for companies trying to make the production of hydrogen cheaper. “There’s over $100 billion spent today on hydrogen in industrial applications,” said Molly Yang, co-founder and CEO of Hgen.
Yang and her co-founder Colin Ho founded Hgen three years ago after stints at Tesla and SpaceX, respectively.
Their goal was to modularize electrolyzers, the chemistry kits capable of cranking out green hydrogen by splitting water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen. Electrolysis isn’t perfectly clean — it still requires electricity, which today is generated from a mixture of renewables and fossil fuels, but as the grid gets cleaner, the production of hydrogen through electrolysis gets cleaner as well.
That vision earned them a $2 million seed round in 2022 led by Founders Fund and induction into that year’s Breakthrough Energy Fellows cohort. Now, Hgen is back with another $5 million funding round from Seven Seven Six with participation from Fontinalis Partners and Founders Fund, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.
Hgen is using alkaline electrolyzers, an old and proven technology that typically trades some of the efficiency gains of newer approaches in favor of lower costs. But Yang claimed that Hgen has found a way to shrink the electrolyzer twenty-fold, reducing materials and manufacturing costs. “Even with first builds, we’re coming out at a much lower cost.