Many industries that rely on traditional energy sources are looking to electrify or at least streamline their operations, but for countless use cases the technology doesn't exist yet. H3X is changing that with an electric motor that is compact and efficient enough to catch the attention of the aerospace and marine industries, and investors too.
We reported on the H3X's stealth launch back in 2021. Since then, CEO Jason Silvestre spoke exclusively to TechCrunch, saying that the H3X was “primarily demonstrating that this technology works, and we've got orders from a number of aerospace companies to prove that.”
They've also grown from their founding team (Sylvestre, CTO Max Liben, and COO Eric Maciolek) to a still-thin 33 people — “probably thinner than we should be aiming for.”
H3X makes electric motors, but to be clear, that doesn't mean a complete powertrain like the battery-motor-wheel combination found in electric cars or airplane propeller mechanisms. It's the middle part of the equation that converts electricity into mechanical force, usually a rotating driveshaft.
What sets the company's devices apart, and that may sound mundane, is how small they are for the amount of power they put out: Electric motors are generally smaller and simpler than internal combustion engines, but they still need space to house all the wiring, cooling and other system components, especially when they have to power something larger like a vehicle.
To put it in perspective, if you have an electric motor the size of a dishwasher, the H3X's equivalent motor (same power, same torque, etc.) might be the size of a microwave oven. That's a big change in an industry where every inch and pound counts, like drones and small aircraft.
Silvestre said that while the company's series of small motors (in the hundreds of kilowatts range) have been popular and useful, the new $20 million in funding will enable the team to complete development of a megawatt-scale motor that he hopes will be a game changer.
A mock-up of the megawatt unit and the H3X testing facility. Image courtesy of H3X.
“We're going to establish new market-leading products that are going to transform the aerospace and marine industries,” he told TechCrunch. “It's going to be a pretty stark contrast. A megawatt machine is going to take up this entire room.” [i.e. an ordinary small meeting room]Ours is about two feet in diameter and about a foot thick.”
For those of you who don't have an innate sense of how many watts it takes to do things, a megawatt motor could power something the size of a small passenger jet, and that's exactly where the company is seeing traction.
“There is a lot of interest in hybrid electric aircraft because they offer the benefits of electric propulsion without the drawbacks and limitations of batteries,” Sibestor said.
Hybrid architectures have been proven on a small scale (think two-seaters and seaplanes), but currently the math doesn't add up at larger scales.
Test aircraft equipped with H3X motors. Image courtesy of H3X
Luckily, the H3X's motor seems to have been made specifically for this application (and in some ways, you could say it was).
First, the design is reversible, so it can seamlessly function as a motor or generator, or both. This simplifies hybrid powertrains, where an internal combustion engine drives a generator, which in turn powers an electric motor to create propulsion. While this may sound unnecessarily complicated, it allows both the engine and motor to run at peak efficiency with minimal losses. Many vessels already run on diesel-electric hybrid engines. Connecting two H3X units in series increases this benefit even further.
Secondly, because the units are small and the power electronics are built-in, you can add as many as you need to scale up.
“If you use a traditional megawatt-class generator like we have today, that aircraft would have a hard time taking off. And even if it could take off, it wouldn't fly very far,” he continued. “We have two customers in commercial aviation: one with a 19-seat aircraft and one with a 30-seat aircraft. But these units are stackable, so you just stack them together to get higher power levels. We can power a 50-seat or 100-seat aircraft.”
The company has contracts and customers across aerospace, marine and military, powering things like drones, small aircraft and some sort of ocean racing equipment (no idea what that means), “and one classified device that they won't actually tell us what it is.” (Fortunately, the technology doesn't seem suitable for weapons development, though investor Cubit Capital's Philip Carson said in a press release that the company “now has strong support at the Department of Defense.”)
Image credit: H3x
The marine sector is also a promising growth area, with many in the industry pushing to decarbonize, or at least minimize reliance on, the ageing diesel engines that power much of the ocean-going and passenger traffic. But the power required is huge, and space on board is limited, so high power at low volumes is good news for the industry.
Heavy industries that use generators to power their facilities and equipment have also shown interest. They've got all the space they need, so why not? Silvestre said stacking H3X units could be simpler and easier to maintain than traditional setups, and it would also mean transporting a lot less metal.
Though the company's megawatt dreams are yet to be realized, H3X is already turning a profit: Silvestre declined to provide specific figures but said revenues were in the “millions of dollars” last year and are on track to grow fivefold this year, with the company aiming to be profitable by 2026.
The $20 million A round will allow the company to hire and build the facilities it needs to complete the megawatt unit and fulfill existing contracts. There is still plenty of demand for kilowatt-scale motors, but megawatts could open up new markets.
The funding round was led by Infinite Capital, with participation from Hanwha AM, Cubit Capital, Origin Ventures, Industrious Ventures and Venn10 Capital, as well as existing investors Lockheed Martin Ventures, Metaplanet, Liquid 2 Ventures and TechNexus.
If electrification is truly the next step for shipping and local/regional air travel, it will be hard to match what H3X is offering, but startups like this are becoming a driving force for change in traditional industries, and there's plenty of room for everyone.