While most labs are bracing for funding cuts and a decreasing payline, Lithios and Deep Isolation just secured a combined $40 million from the Department of Energy as part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s (ARPA-E) SCALEUP Ready program.
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SCALEUP Ready is a rolling program designed to accelerate the commercial scale-up of high-impact energy technologies as part of the administration’s goal to strengthen domestic energy supply chains.
With the funding, Lithios will advance an electrochemical Advanced Lithium Extraction (ALE) process to produce lithium from low-grade U.S. brines. Deep Isolation will use its funding to scale the company’s Universal Canister System to store, transport and permanently dispose of nuclear waste.
The SCALEUP Ready program was allocated $50 million for the fiscal year 2025 and an additional $50 million for 2026. Funding is being awarded with a focus on industrial resilience and domestic supply chains, including power generation, resources and mining, grid infrastructure, transportation and efficiency.
Eligible technology must have originated from a previous ARPA-E award. Applicants also must form a Project Team. The DOE tends to favor teams that include commercialization partners and financial partners. The funding is for scaling and pre-pilot work, not discovery science, targeting Technology Readiness Level (TRL) seven or eight.
Interested applicants can request a pre-submission discussion with an ARPA-E Technology-to-Market advisor and read the Notice of Funding Opportunity to apply.
The funding landscape
Even as SCALEUP Ready is receiving $100 million in funding, other federal agencies are experiencing extreme cuts. There is a proposed $1.1 billion cut to the DOE Office of Science and a 54% reduction in funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF).
A Jan. 20, 2025, Executive Order paused green subsidies. The SCALEUP Ready program avoided this because it is classified as industrial infrastructure and national security, two areas of focus for the administration.
Funding is shifting away from discovery science and towards commercialization, focusing on bridging the gap between successful pilots and commercialization. Energy research funding is increasingly focusing on domestic dominance, highlighted by the SCALEUP Ready initiative.
The 2026 funding environment is increasingly competitive, with less funding meaning fewer grants. The focus is shifting to work that can be built, deployed and marketed, especially technologies focused on energy and national security.
