Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

In a packed, standing-room-only crowd at PYA’s national headquarters, five Tennessee-based high-growth startups took the stage to compete for a total of $66,000 worth of monetary and strategic support from the 6th annual PYA Ballard Innovation Award.

EVRCool, an innovative industrial process chiller company founded by Josh Roby and Jacob Swain, took home the first-place prize of $50,000 in cash and in-kind services, as decided by the judges. Additionally, the EVRCool team secured the inaugural Executives’ Choice Award, with a $1,000 cash prize, which was decided upon by the business leaders in attendance.

Modern infrastructure, such as AI data centers, EV transportation, and industrial power electronics, is pushing power density to new limits. As systems grow more powerful, effective heat removal has become a critical constraint on performance. Conventional air cooling and legacy liquid cooling systems are increasingly energy-intensive and insufficient.

EVRCool develops advanced industrial chiller technology using proprietary heat-transfer architectures that significantly increase cooling capacity while reducing system size, energy consumption, and operational complexity versus conventional approaches. The company has two patents pending, has already raised more than $4 million to scale its technology, and is already generating revenue with customers and purchase orders.

A strategic, impactful room

The breadth and depth of business, leadership, and entrepreneurial expertise in the room was noticeable.

Marty Brown, the Chief Executive Officer for PYA, said attendees included: 28 CEOs, 27 founders, 23 angel investors, 15 bank executives, nine leaders at the University of Tennessee and UT Research Foundation, seven economic developers, and five chamber leaders, three elected officials, three wealth managers, and two leaders from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Additionally, the prestigious judging panel included:

The other winners

The judges selected TerraSYNC, with founder Wesley Pitts, as the first runner-up for the Ballard Innovation Award. Pitts will be recieving $10,000 worth of in-kind strategy support for his business. Pitts addressed one of the judges, Tom Ballard, directly: “Tom, you first wrote about a kid at UT making robotic mowers under the name KnoxBots. Today, I’m going to show you where our company is now – and a category we created.”

TerraSYNC is a software that connects all automated grounds maintenance equipment, regardless of manufacturer. Pitts also announced at the PYA Ballard Innovation Award that he is officially opening a capital raise to help TerraSYNC scale.

The judges selected CE Tools Inc., with founder Dan Lemcke as the second runner-up for the competition. Lemcke will be recieveing $5,000 worth of in-kind strategy support for his business.

Other startups that competed this year include Coulomb Technology, founded by Tim Vosburgh, and Qubit Engineering, founded by Marouane Salhi.

The PYA Ballard Innovation Award competition is open to any early-stage company in the East Tennessee area that has established a proof of concept with accompanying revenue. Applicants must present a business plan to optimize existing operations while demonstrating clear innovations to improve the business and empower consumers. Read more about the applicant qualifications. Start-ups that meet the qualifications apply for the award via a publicly available online application.

The PYA Ballard Innovation Award is named after Tom Ballard, retired PYA Chief Alliance Officer, who spent decades creating relationships and supporting the East Tennessee region’s entrepreneurial community. He also founded PYA’s Teknovation.biz, which covers regional stories about technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic development.

Find more information about the Award here.

Read more coverage from WBIR.

---