As the world transitions to clean, renewable energy, innovation is needed to ensure the resilience of electrical infrastructure. The western Massachusetts-based company florrent, cofounded by three University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni and launched out of the university, is “engineering the future of reliable electricity” with its novel supercapacitor technology.

The seeds for the now-flourishing company were first planted decades ago when cofounders Joe Hastry ’15 and Jose LaSalle ’16 were growing up together in Marshfield, Massachusetts, on the South Shore. Hastry recalls the ever-increasing severe storms that knocked down seawalls and flooded their town. “I started to think, ‘This isn’t normal. How can we contribute to a solution to help mitigate this climate crisis?’” he says. “That started the environmental impact journey we’re on.”

The two friends went on to attend UMass Amherst, with LaSalle studying electrical engineering and Hastry pursuing accounting at the Isenberg School of Management. As an undergraduate in the College of Engineering (recently renamed the Riccio College of Engineering), LaSalle conducted research on graphene supercapacitors. He also met Alex Nichols ’15, florrent’s third cofounder. But it wasn’t until several years after graduating—while LaSalle was visiting home for the holidays from his base in the Pacific Northwest, where he was working at a start-up—that he pitched Hastry on the idea of forming a supercapacitor start-up.

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“I’m a CPA by training, so I didn’t understand a lot of the technical aspects,” Hastry recalls. “But when Jose started talking about the value chain we could create by sourcing the inputs for this technology from underrepresented farming communities that have been left behind in prior technological revolutions—that’s when I was sold.” 

With its supercapacitor technology, florrent is working to stabilize electrical grids and address critical bottlenecks. When it comes to renewable energy, as Hastry puts it, “the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.” Supercapacitors are an essential part of the suite of energy storage solutions needed to create a stable grid. While batteries are like “marathon runners” for the grid, supercapacitors are “sprinters,” addressing large spikes and dips in power over short durations—typically in the sub-second to sub-minute range. This is critical to preventing power outages in behind-the-meter applications at facilities like data centers, hospitals, and financial institutions, and can provide similar “grid-firming” services in front-of-the-meter applications at the utility scale.

LaSalle envisioned a better way to build supercapacitors, which have long relied on biomass from coconut shells that are almost exclusively grown in the Philippines and processed in Japan. LaSalle saw a way to use pecan shells—which grow across a much wider geographic area and are abundant in the United States—as the biomass. When put through florrent’s proprietary activation process, this biomass becomes an activated carbon material known as Contoured Carbon™ —the “secret sauce” for florrent’s supercapacitors—that translates to higher performance at a lower cost.

Hastry and LaSalle began early planning for florrent around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the shift to remote work and communication over video chat platforms helped facilitate their cross-country collaboration. They brought on Nichols, whose electrical engineering skillset complemented LaSalle’s, as the third cofounder in spring 2020. To truly launch their business, they needed a physical space for headquarters and, after searching all over North America and Europe for the best place to start a supercapacitor company, landed back at their alma mater.

“It almost felt too easy, but UMass Amherst was the perfect place to start florrent,” says Hastry. “The UMass Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) is home to the world-class Roll-to-Roll Fabrication & Processing (R2R) Facility, which we could access for a supercheap rate thanks to state subsidies. It’s an IP-free zone, so we were able to continue to develop our tech without any IP concerns. We also got plugged into a pipeline of talented, passionate interns at UMass. Looking back now, it’s 100 percent clear that it was the right decision for us to start at UMass.”

IALS’s Venture Development staff also introduced the florrent team to venture capital firms—beginning with MassVentures—which ultimately led to two successful seed funding rounds. “Having that first investor come in has opened so many doors for us,” says Hastry. “From that initial touchpoint, we’ve raised nearly $20 million all in. We owe so much of that to the ecosystem that the IALS Venture Development team opened up for us.”

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Today, florrent continues to work out of the UMass R2R facility regularly, but it also has its own manufacturing facility in South Deerfield and a lab plus office space in Sunderland. They plan to move to a consolidated facility in Northampton in early 2026, which will allow them to reach the next scale of production. Their staff currently stands at 14 people—including the three cofounders—approaching 20 employees in the near future.

In the longer term, florrent’s cofounders aim to scale globally. “Our guiding mission is to contribute to the well-being of people and the planet,” says Hastry. “We want to prove that you can be an innovative technology company that is looking to drive a profitable business while also creating positive impact in your supply chain, sequestering carbon, diverting waste from landfills, and ultimately enabling decarbonization of the grid.”
 

This story was originally published in November 2025.