News & Notes | Spring Twendé graduates secure $40,000 in investments
A research collaboration between the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley Authority earns international recognition.
From Nashville:
The Re:Generate Fund makes direct capital grants to graduates of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center‘s Twendé program, allowing them to start and scale their businesses without giving up equity. The Spring graduates received a total of $40,000.
Since 2021, Re:Generate has deployed $281,000 across 41 grants. The selection committee reviewed 17 applications for Spring 2025. Eight founders received grants ranging from $2,250 to $8,000 – precisely calibrated to solve specific growth challenges.
The latest receipients were:
- Jessica Bobbitt, Black Candle Company;
- Stuart McClean, BaQ-Bone BBQ;
- Jessica McMillan and Simone Gonzalez, TNT Goods;
- Dwyan Young-Smith, Floradayleaf;
- Shannon Sanders Jr., Cape Coast Co.;
- Jessica Johnson, Myrrh Candle Co.;
- Chanel Thomas, Blue Sage Wellness; and
- Leah Langley-McClean, Ellenelle Bridal.
Elysian, an artificial intelligence (AI) third-party administrator for commercial insurance, has announced the closing of a $6 million seed round led by Portage, with participation from American Family Ventures and TenOneTen Ventures. The funding will accelerate Elysian’s go-to-market efforts, support customer onboarding, and scale the company’s delivery operations and technology platform.
Built to address the complexity of commercial claims, Elysian was founded by Grace Hanson, a former lawyer and seasoned executive who previously served as Chief Claims Officer at Allied World, Homesite Insurance, Hiscox, and Hippo Insurance.
“We built Elysian by rethinking claims handling from the ground up – designing a hybrid intelligence system where AI manages the ‘messy middle’ and adjusters can focus on the human parts,” said Hanson. “Our approach is shaped by firsthand industry insight and designed to raise the standard for modern claims services.”
The company delivers two core offerings, end-to-end claims handling and Dynamic Claim Review (DCR), supported by proprietary AI technology built to work alongside adjusters, not around them. For active claims, Elysian’s system surfaces coverage and liability insights and drafts tailored communications, allowing adjusters to focus on the decisions that matter. DCR brings expert-led analysis to entire claims portfolios, delivering faster, deeper reviews than traditional audits.
From Chattanooga:
A research collaboration between the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) earned international recognition this summer from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional organization for advancing technology.
The UTC-TVA research team’s paper, “Offsite Power Grid Strength Determination for Nuclear Power Plants: Improved Calculations and Practical Implementation,” was co-authored by Dr. Abdel Karrar, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Associate Dean of the UTC College of Engineering and Computer Science; UTC undergraduate students Andrew Adams and Julio Gonzalez; and Mark Bowman, Senior Program Manager of Power System Analysis at TVA. It was selected as one of four Prize Conference Papers at the 2025 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PES GM) in Austin, Texas.
Out of more than 1,600 papers submitted to the IEEE PES GM, considered the largest global forum for power engineers, only about five percent were chosen as Best Papers. From that elite group, four were selected as Prize Papers—one from each of the conference’s major technical tracks.
From Knoxville:
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and ENTRA1 Energy (ENTRA1) have announced the signing of an agreement to advance the nation’s energy security and maintain America’s leadership in nuclear technologies. Under this agreement, ENTRA1 Energy will collaborate with TVA to develop plants to provide TVA with up to 6 gigawatts of new nuclear power generation on sites in TVA’s seven-state region through the deployment of six ENTRA1 Energy Plants.
This collaboration could provide enough energy to power the equivalent of approximately 4.5 million homes or 60 new data centers—at a time when hyperscale data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor manufacturing, and other energy-intensive technologies are driving unprecedented growth in electricity demand. ENTRA1 aims to develop and own a portfolio of power infrastructure assets and sell the output to TVA under future power purchase agreements.
ENTRA1 Energy is an American company dedicated to producing power by commercializing and deploying American nuclear and natural gas technologies in its power infrastructure assets.
The company is pioneering the commercialization of small modular reactors (SMRs) as a bridge between technologies and end usage of power. As NuScale’s strategic partner, ENTRA1 Energy drives the deployment, financing, investment, development, execution, and management of ENTRA1 Energy Plants™ with NuScales SMRs inside. The TVA and ENTRA1 Energy partnership is an important first step to advance deployment of advanced nuclear technology in America with ENTRA1’s immediate strategy to utilize NuScale’ s SMR equipment inside ENTRA1 Energy Plants™.
“TVA is leading the nation in pursuing new nuclear technologies, and no utility in the U.S. is working harder or faster than TVA. This agreement with ENTRA1 Energy highlights the vital role public-private partnerships play in advancing next-generation nuclear technologies that are essential to providing energy security – reliable, abundant American energy – and creating jobs and investment across the nation,” said Don Moul, TVA President and Chief Executive Officer.“The ENTRA1 team brings deep experience in investing in, developing, and executing power infrastructure. Our focus is on deploying best-in-class American technologies in the nuclear SMR and natural gas-fired power sectors – and that is what we are doing in the immediate term via our partnership with NuScale SMRs. We’re investing in the next generation of power solutions to meet the country’s growing energy demands,” said Skip Alvarado, ENTRA1 Energy Chief Projects Officer.
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