ATS Energy appoints CTO, board members

LOVELAND — Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems Corp., doing business as ATS Energy, announced three leadership additions Monday. The Loveland-based company developed a solid-state generator that converts industrial thermal energy into electricity without moving parts.

Ed Ganja joined the company as chief technology officer and also has become a member of the board of directors along with Mike Kleinberg and Brandon Beehler.

The appointments follow ATS’s recently announced $9 million financing round, as the company transitions from technology validation into repeatable manufacturing and commercial deployment.

“ATS Energy is working to accelerate production,” CEO Doug Hudson said. “Ed, Mike, and Brandon bring the engineering, financial and investment leadership this phase requires. Their experience strengthens how we build, fund, and scale the business as we move toward commercial deployment.”

Ganja, a former Shell technology executive, will lead the company’s technology roadmap and engineering capabilities and guide its transition to commercial manufacturing. He has nearly two decades of industrial technology and engineering leadership experience from Shell, where he most recently served as vice president for catalyst and analytical technology. He previously led catalyst research and refining catalyst technology. His background gives ATS direct insight into what industrial operators require from new technology.

“His job at Shell was to take bench science and commercialize it at scale on a global basis,” Hudson told BizWest.

Ganja holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Chicago.

“Industrial customers need technology they can rely on in demanding environments,” Ganja said in a news release.  “ATS has the technology and the demand. My focus is repeatable engineering and manufacturing, so we can deliver reliable systems to customers at scale.”

Kleinberg, chief financial officer of Forge Nano (Nasdaq: NANO), has served in that position at several technology and manufacturing companies and had a previous career in investment banking. Thornton-headquartered Forge Nano, a University of Colorado Boulder spinout, began trading on Nasdaq Oct. 22 after a business combination with Archimedes Tech SPAC Partners II that valued the company at approximately $1.6 billion, making it CU Boulder’s 11th unicorn.

“ATS is building a capital-efficient manufacturing model, and that discipline matters as a company grows,” Kleinberg said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to helping the team manage capital requirements, build manufacturing capabilities and prepare for its next stage of growth.”

Beehler is a registered professional engineer with more than a decade of experience developing and delivering projects at heavy industrial facilities, from concept through startup and commissioning, across refining, gas processing, chemical processing and power generation. He currently works at Ultra Capital, an investor in energy transition and infrastructure, and previously managed the Energy Business unit at Harris Group, an engineering design firm. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from CU Boulder.

“Putting new technology into an industrial facility takes more than a good product,” Beehler said.  “It takes sound project development, disciplined capital deployment and a clear understanding of what a plant needs to adopt it. I have seen those requirements firsthand, and I look forward to helping ATS meet them as it scales.”

Building on commercial momentum

ATS Energy, with six full-time employees and a handful of contractors, is advancing its initial commercial deployments while expanding its manufacturing capabilities through a network of specialized contract-manufacturing partners. The new appointments add leadership in the areas that matter most to that plan: engineering, manufacturing, capital management and investment strategy.

Closing of the financing round, announced in October, will advance commercial production of its solid-state generator technology.

The capital will support production of ATS’s proprietary thermoelectric cartridges, a core component of the generators, and completion of its first commercial unit, targeted for deployment by mid-2027. The company says the financing will shorten the time required to produce and deliver subsequent installations as customer demand grows.

“The round is really intended to move us into commercial production of our solid-state generator,” Hudson said Monday. “We’ve already gone through industrial-technology validation with the U,S. Department of Energy. We’ve got well over a $300 million commercial sales pipeline with a couple of those moving into either engineering due diligence or contract negotiations.

“So we’ve really moved beyond that early interest into what I would consider commercial commitments,” he said. “These are across multiple industry segments. What we’re looking to do is drive this funding deployment for commercial units by the end of Q2 and beginning of Q3.”

Industrial facilities generate enormous quantities of waste heat, much of which is released into the environment without producing additional value. ATS’s technology converts this otherwise wasted thermal energy directly into usable electricity without turbines or moving parts

The company’s next phase centers on translating that innovation into commercial production.

“We have spent years building a proven track record of breakthrough technology,” Hudson said. “What has developed over the past year is that markets are moving toward ATS Energy. We’ve moved well beyond early interest to commercial commitments, active proposals and a pipeline that continues to expand across multiple industrial sectors. That puts us in a tremendous position to meet the moment in delivering energy to industry. This investment responds to real commercial opportunity, and it positions ATS Energy to scale production, meet customer demand faster, and drive commercial deployments.”

Rather than investing heavily in its own manufacturing facilities, ATS is developing a production model supported by specialized contract-manufacturing partners. The strategy is designed to leverage established manufacturing capabilities, limit capital expenditures and provide a scalable foundation for future production.

“We are scaling manufacturing with the discipline required for commercial-grade industrial deployment moving beyond proof-of-concept to deliver mission-critical equipment,” Terry Hill, ATS’s chief operating officer, said in a news release. “We’ve been building the supply chain, identifying the right manufacturing partners and putting the processes in place to move toward repeatable production. By leveraging contract manufacturing, we can focus our capital on the technology, the product and our customers rather than building factories. Just as importantly, we’re working to reduce the time between installations so we can respond to the demand we’re seeing in the market.”

ATS completed its initial friends-and-family financing in 2025.

The company was awarded the 2024 Earthshot Prize in the Fix Our Climate category and received second place in the Innovations for Traditional Energy, Electricity and the Grid category at the 2026 Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition, held in March in Houston.

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