Yet-Ming Chiang’s research on materials science might seem esoteric. But he’s used it to build an array of companies in areas like batteries, green cement and critical minerals that could really help mitigate the climate crisis.
By Amy Feldman, Forbes Staff
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Yet-Ming Chiang likes to fish. And it was through fishing, back in the early 1990s, that he started to notice that the New England waters were warming. “We used to catch lobster in Cape Cod,” said Chiang, in a call from his office with a Japanese style fish print of a striped bass he’d caught behind him. “Now we catch mahi-mahi. It’s really nuts.”
That glimpse of the real-world impact of climate change, with tropical and subtropical fish appearing in waters where they don’t belong, was pivotal for Chiang, who has used his research lab to cofound 10 startups. Eight of them are focused on energy and sustainability, including Form Energy, which has raised nearly $1 billion for its iron-air battery products, and Sublime Systems, which in April received $87 million from the Department of Energy to build a commercial plant to make low-carbon cement.
As the climate crisis has become increasingly urgent, Chiang’s research and his ability to spin out real-world applications from it offers hope, and landed him a spot on Forbes’ inaugural Sustainability Leaders list. He holds some 110 patents and has written more than 300 scientific articles in fields like battery technology and electrochemical production of industrial materials. Perhaps more important, he has used that research to launch companies to replace current carbon-based technologies with commercially scalable green and low-carbon alternatives. To date, his startups have raised more than $2.5 billion to build batteries, decarbonize cement and find more environmentally friendly ways to mine the critical minerals that are key to electrification. He is not CEO of any of these startups, but he often maintains a role, for example as chief science officer at both Form Energy and Sublime Systems.
“People worry about, can you do something by 2050, and what if you can’t. Let’s not spend time worrying about it. There’s plenty to do. I’m an optimist,” Chiang said. “It’s not as if we arrive in 2050, and say, ‘We didn’t do it all in time, let’s give up.’”
Chiang, 66, immigrated from Taiwan with his family when he was six after his dad received an engineering degree at Oklahoma State University. He grew up in New Jersey and Connecticut, where for a time his parents ran a store that sold Asian foods, including home-made egg rolls. He went to MIT as a college freshman and never left, receiving a doctorate in ceramics in 1985 and joining the faculty. By 1990, at age 32, he had tenure.
While Chiang always worked on research related to energy – he was, he notes, a high-schooler during the 1970s energy crisis – it wasn’t until the mid-2000s, that he made climate and sustainability his focus. Today, that’s all he does. “When students come in and say they’d like to research with me, I tell them all I do is climate,” said Chiang, whose research group typically numbers 25, including grad students and postdocs.
He launched his first startup, American Superconductor, which makes high-temperature superconducting wire for energy and power applications, in 1987. Known as a superstar in the field of battery research, he’s since cofounded four battery companies, including Form Energy, launched in 2017. And he’s more recently started companies in areas that include cement and engines for electric aircraft. All told, he said, he’s worked in five different technology areas with the potential for decarbonization of multiple gigatons of greenhouse gases per year.
“Yet is one of MIT’s most prolific academic inventors and has been a force in energy materials for several decades,” said Carmichael Roberts, cofounder of Boston-based venture firm Material Impact, which invests in materials science innovation. “He is one of the best in the world at his craft.”
His first battery company, A123 Systems, dates back to 2001. Ric Fulop, who was then a 26-year-old college dropout, knocked on his door. Fulop, now CEO of Desktop Metal, a 3D printing company that counts Chiang as a cofounder, had read Chiang’s papers on a new technology for fast-charging lithium-ion batteries and saw the potential to commercialize the innovation.
A123 Systems raised a bundle, including $250 million in federal grant money, and when it went public in 2009, in a $380 million IPO, the stock jumped 50% on the first day of trading, closing above $20 a share. But hopes soon soured for the money-losing company. There was too much supply, including cheaper batteries from Asia, and not enough demand as sales of electric cars gained traction slower than expected. In October 2012, with shares trading for just 25 cents per share, A123 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It emerged from bankruptcy the following year, under Chinese ownership. Despite that, Chiang considers it a success because the technology developed there is still in use and its alumni have spread out across other energy startups, including ONE and Vertiv.
“Yet-Ming has created one of the more prolific portfolios of our time,” said Dayna Grayson, cofounder of Construct Capital who has known Chiang for years. “He has a really big appetite for how impactful things can be.”
With Sublime Systems, founded in 2020, Chiang moved from batteries to cement. Roughly one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions come from industry, with cement and steel two of the biggest culprits, accounting for roughly 8% each.
Leah Ellis, Sublime’s cofounder and CEO, went to MIT as a postdoc to work with Chiang. Though her research at that time was all in batteries, after Form Energy spun out, Chiang asked her to consider researching how to decarbonize cement because of its potential impact and because there was interest from investors and government officials. “Yet’s mode of inventing is he starts with a problem and works his way backwards to a solution,” Ellis said. “He can go from batteries to cement to cold fusion.”
Sublime Systems has now set up a pilot plant and is building out a commercial facility in Holyoke, Mass. Its electrochemical process replaces the high-temperature kilns traditionally used for making cement that are such big CO2 emitters. “Electricity is going to be the lowest-cost form of energy so we should try to electrify all the processes that use fossil fuels,” Chiang said.
Chiang recently launched three new climate companies. He cofounded Propel Aero, which is developing an engine to meet the demands of electric aircraft, and could also be used to electrify shipping and trains, that recently received $1.1 million from the ARPA-E federal research program. He’s also working on a startup that does lithium-extraction from hard rock and another in the field of geologic hydrogen, which could be a vast source of carbon-free energy. “Geologic hydrogen is going to go through a big hype cycle, but in a way it deserves it because there’s this tantalizing possibility that there’s going to be a new primary energy source,” Chiang said.
Lately, Chiang has been thinking a lot about critical minerals — the mines from which they are gathered and the smelters that heat ore to high temperature in order to extract metals. They are hardly environmentally friendly. “Those smelters created the entire field of acid rain,” he said with a laugh. “What could you do that would not require a smelter? I had an idea that now I am going to ask one of my new graduate students to spend some time looking into.”
Decarbonization is still early, especially in areas like industry and mining, and the impact of coming up with new technologies could be enormous. “Decarbonization means that you are given the license to reinvent technologies and industries that have been around for 100, and in some cases 200, years. How often do you get that opportunity?” Chiang said. “It’s a great time to be on the solutions side of things.”
