U-M PJTL Climate Change 2027 Startup Cohort Announced

students working outside on a sustainability project

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The Center for Entrepreneurship (CFE) at the University of Michigan announces the 2027 startup cohort for the Perot Jain TechLab Climate Change program. Following an intensive summer recruitment drive that drew numerous impressive applications from global climate-tech startups, six ventures were selected to collaborate with U-M student teams.

PJTL Climate Change offers students a distinctive chance to acquire practical entrepreneurial experience by engaging with startups developing carbon-reducing, sustainable technologies. Startups in Pre-Seed to Series B stages are matched with multidisciplinary student teams for two semesters. Startups gain high-level technical R&D support and access to U-M computing and laboratory infrastructure at no financial cost, while retaining all project IP. In contrast, students gain mentorship from global climate leaders.

“Addressing global climate change requires rapid scaling of hard-tech and digital decarbonization solutions. The PJTL Climate Change program offers U-M students an extraordinary platform to contribute directly to verified carbon removal, carbon-negative building materials, and clean energy commercialization alongside visionary global founders.”

Nick Moroz

CFE Director of Entrepreneurial Education & Director of the Perot Jain TechLab Programs

The 2027 PJTL Climate Change companies and projects include:

ICODOS (Mannheim, Germany) — ICODOS leverages patented hybrid processes merging CO2 capture with e-methanol synthesis. Students will construct an AI-assisted screening pipeline, Aspen Plus process co-simulations, and techno-economic assessments (TEA) to evaluate solar-driven photocatalytic hydrogen generation combined with Light-Swing Absorption (LSA) oxygen removal.

Octavia Carbon (Nairobi, Kenya) — Octavia Carbon is the Global South’s first Direct Air Capture (DAC) company, designing, manufacturing, and deploying geothermal-integrated DAC machines in Kenya’s Rift Valley for permanent geological storage through CO₂ mineralization. Students will conduct experimental analyses of data to establish critical operating windows (residual oxygen thresholds, vacuum levels, and cooling temperatures) to prevent sorbent degradation.

“Scaling Direct Air Capture (DAC) down the cost curve starts at the materials level. That’s why we are honored to be working with the University of Michigan to improve the efficiency of our CO₂ capture material (sorbent). Through process optimization, we aim to increase CO₂ uptake per capture cycle and reduce sorbent degradation, improving our unit economics.”

Naaman Kiprono

Process Optimization Lead

twelve. (Burgos, Spain) — twelve. It is an impact financial app that automatically directs everyday credit card cashback rewards into cause-aligned sustainability portfolios. Student teams will build the data pipelines and impact measurement methodology required to translate daily consumer transactions into verified, auditable carbon offset and environmental metrics.

“Your values already show up in what you eat, what you wear, what you buy. Your money was the one place they didn’t. twelve. changes that.”

Lucas Olivella

CEO & Co-founder of twelve.

Solmeyea (Athens, Greece) — Solmeyea utilizes its patented CO₂-utilization biotech platform via microalgae fermentation to transform industrial CO₂ into healthy, nutritious, safe, and highly functional, nutrient-rich protein ingredients (MEY™). Student teams will develop and demonstrate a commercialization decision-support framework for MEY™, including market segmentation and evaluation of go-to-market strategies for B2B food ingredients and consumer Ready-to-Drink superfood products.

“We are beyond excited for Solmeyea to participate in the PJTL Climate Change 2027 cohort and to collaborate with talented University of Michigan students on one of the most important challenges of our time: turning industrial carbon emissions into valuable, sustainable food ingredients. Programs like this are a highly appreciated, powerful bridge between entrepreneurial talent, climate innovation and real-world industrial deployment.”

Vasilis Stenos

Co-Founder & CEO, Solmeyea Biotech

Low Carbon Materials (Seaham, United Kingdom) — Earthshot Prize finalist Low Carbon Materials manufactures ACLA, a carbon-negative drop-in aggregate for asphalt and concrete that locks away ~800 kg of CO₂ per ton. Students will test ACLA against US aggregate standards (ASTM/AASHTO) and map state DOT procurement and approval pathways for US market entry.

ACLA is a tried-and-tested decarbonization solution in the UK, currently used by the leading suppliers of asphalt and concrete on major projects across the country. With
With support from students at The University of Michigan, we aim to map our route to the US market by understanding procurement pathways and the requirements for alignment with US construction material standards.

Natasha Boulding

Co-Founder & CEO, Low Carbon Materials

Nordlys (Turin, Italy) — Nordlys, a 2026 GenAI Zürich semifinalist, is an AI supply chain intelligence platform built on Matryoshka representation learning and LLM-based reranking, with carbon footprint and supplier risk natively incorporated into its scoring. As carbon capture scales, its supplier ecosystem remains fragmented and largely uncharted, a bottleneck to deployment. The student team will formalize a domain ontology of the CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage) supply chain and build the first open, reproducible benchmark of its supplier ecosystem, running Nordlys’s pipeline on U-M’s Great Lakes HPC cluster to deliver an explainable natural-language sourcing demo that returns ranked, auditable supplier shortlists.

“Most climate technologies will ultimately be constrained by their supply chains, yet the supplier side of carbon capture remains largely uncharted. Partnering with a University of Michigan team lets us apply our retrieval and ranking research to that gap and give the field an open benchmark it doesn’t yet have.”

Sonia Saibene

CEO, Nordlys

The University of Michigan’s Perot Jain TechLab Climate Change Unveils 2027 Startup Cohort