# ACRE

> ACRE is a VC fund in Brooklyn backing Energy and Software. See 20 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Oct 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Brooklyn, United States
- Total investments: 20
- Last investment: May 2020
- Lead investor: 20%
- Last updated: Oct 2026
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/nycacre
- Website: http://ufl.nyc/acre
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urbanfuturelab/

ACRE is a cleantech, smart grid and sustainable, smart cities incubator that supports early stage business ventures with innovative technologies and new business models for a greener, smarter and more connected world.Their members benefit from our extensive community of cleantech industry stakeholders as well as exclusive access to professionalservices. The incubator grows our member startups from prototypes and pilots phases to fully commercialized entities.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for ACRE. Shizune tracks 4 team members at ACRE. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/acre-3?utm_source=investor_profile

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Energy | 7 | 35% |
| Software | 5 | 25% |
| Renewable Energy | 5 | 25% |
| Clean Energy | 4 | 20% |
| Energy Efficiency | 4 | 20% |

40 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Non-equity Assistance | 13 | 65% |
| Grant | 6 | 30% |
| Pre-Seed | 1 | 5% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 15 | 75% |
| Canada | 2 | 10% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 5% |
| The Netherlands | 1 | 5% |

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Jiro Otsuka | Program Manager | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jiro-otsuka |
| Joseph Silver | Program Manager | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/joseph-silver |
| Pat Sapinsley | Managing Director of Cleantech Initiatives | 8 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/pat-sapinsley |
| Simon Sylvester Chaudhuri | Innovation Development | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/simon-sylvester-chaudhuri |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Zinc8 Energy Solutions | Zinc8 is an energy company that offers a low-cost, long-duration energy storage solution in order to enable global energy sustainability. Zinc8's innovative battery technology, which uses zinc and air as fuel, solves the intermittent and unpredictable nature of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Clean energy is made reliable andavailable as needed with Zinc8's cost-effective solution. |  | Non-equity Assistance | May 07, 2020 | http://www.zinc8energy.com |
| WexEnergy | WexEnergy is poised to disrupt the window replacement and building insulation markets by delivering an affordable solution that significantly improves comfort and energy efficiency of aging windows. By reducing energy bills, WexEnergy helps building owners increase cash flow, which leads to higher property values and more profitable businesses. | $441.7K | Grant | May 03, 2020 | https://wexenergy.com |
| Soteria Battery Innovation Group | Soteria is revolutionizing lithium-Ion battery safety to enable inherently safe batteries everywhere. Soteria’s technology acts as an internal fuse within the battery to prevent ignition events. It aims to ensure that these materials are available to every battery manufacturer with local production from a broad supply base so that every device -whether a hearing aid or an electric bus - can have a battery that is virtually impossible to self-ignite. It was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina. | $50K | Grant | Apr 24, 2020 | https://www.soteriabig.com/ |
| Scanifly | Scanifly develops a drone-based 3D modeling software that automates and centralizes the manual day-to-day tasks in the solar workflow. |  | Non-equity Assistance | Jul 19, 2019 | https://scanifly.com/ |
| Avvir | Avvir works seamlessly with its existing systems from photo capture, to construction workflow management to laser scans and 360 photos. Their platform helps them identify potential risks and slowdowns, plus save time and money by automating their progress and earned value tracking, quality control, and as-built creation. | $50K | Grant | Feb 28, 2018 | http://Avvir.io |
| simuwatt | Buildee provides accessible building data and science for a broader market. | $50K | Grant | Feb 26, 2018 | http://simuwatt.com |
| Dollaride | Dollaride is a mobility company that develops clean transportation projects in urban cities. The company provides mobility software and financial services that increase clean energy/transportation adoption in underserved markets. Backed by world-class investors, venture capital firms, government agencies, and community partners, Dollaride isforging a new path to the green economy for small transportation fleet owners. Dollaride was inspired by NYC commuter vans (aka "dollar vans"​). Originating in the 1980s, a robust network of commuter van drivers now provides local transportation services to over 120,000 New Yorkers daily. Dollaride service connects fleet owners, drivers, and passengers through the first digital platform for NYC's informal transit network. | $50K | Grant | Feb 26, 2018 | https://dollaride.com/ |
| Highview Power | Founded in 2005, Highview Power Storage is a developer of large-scale energy storage solutions for utility and distributed power systems. Using liquid air as the storage medium, Highview can design bespoke Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) plants ranging from 5MW/20MWh to 100MW/1,000MWh+ to service a growing multi billion dollar market. |  | Non-equity Assistance | Jan 12, 2017 | http://www.highview-power.com |
| Tagup | Tagup Inc. was founded in 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts. The team consists of twenty individ- uals, including eight data scientists. The company’s core IP is related to four areas: 1) High-performance computing pipeline (data acquisition, data wrangling, model and data delivery), 2) Time-to-event modeling (large-scale time series-based modeling oftime to event, accurately predicting equipment failure and critical events over timescales ranging from days to decades), 3) Anomaly detection and operating mode classification (a semi-supervised approach for identifying unusual operation without explicit alarm thresholds), and 4) Inference and optimization (for specific applications, recommending specific control actions to optimize equipment use). Tagup’s customers are primarily in the energy industry, ranging from distribution through generation. The technology is deployed in various applications, including electric distribution networks, high-purity water systems, offshore wind turbines, and military ground vehicles, among others. | $25K | Grant | Nov 18, 2016 | https://tagup.ai |
| Fentrend | The fastest & easiest way to find & price windows & doors. Architects, contractors, and developers send us their specifications and we send them a side-by-side product report listing the price, performance, material, and lead times of up to five matching products pulled from our network of over 70 suppliers. The chosen supplierpays us a commission that represents a deep savings over other sales channels. |  | Non-equity Assistance | Oct 01, 2016 | http://www.fentrend.com |

10 of 20 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- The New York Community Trust — VC Fund, 6 deals together
- NYSERDA — VC Fund, 5 deals together
- [Urban Future Lab](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/urban-future-lab-nyc-acre) — VC Fund, 5 deals together
- [BP Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bp-ventures) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Canadian Technology Accelerator](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/canadian-technology-accelerators) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Cleantech Open](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cleantech-open) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## Similar investors

### Similar stage
- [F6 Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/flat6labs) — VC Fund
- [SVG Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/svg-ventures) — VC Fund
- [Dreamit Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/dreamit-ventures) — VC Fund

## FAQ

### What does ACRE invest in?

ACRE invests primarily in Energy, Software and Renewable Energy startups, most often at Non-equity Assistance and Grant stage. Most of the 20 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### How do I contact ACRE?

Public channels for ACRE include X (Twitter), the website linked on this profile and Facebook. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.

### Who are the partners at ACRE?

The team at ACRE includes Jiro Otsuka (Program Manager), Joseph Silver (Program Manager) and Pat Sapinsley (Managing Director of Cleantech Initiatives). The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

# About Shizune
Shizune.co is an investor database. Core features:
- 48,091 startup investors (angels, VCs, accelerators, and others)
- Email, phone, LinkedIn (for intros), socials, and other contact data
- Updated daily from public funding news
- CSV and Excel export

The User can access the full database FOR FREE after signing up: shizune.co