Anna Martin, the entrepreneur who brought a university project to Silicon Valley
Atom H2, one of the startups with the most potential in the country's energy sector, was co-founded by four young Catalan students
BarcelonaThe Catalan technology sector often boasts about the talent pool offered by the country's university ecosystem. Any technology company that remains in Catalonia explains a good part of its success through the foundation provided by research and educational centers, which allow access to high-level ideas and professionals without leaving home. Atom H2, one of the rising stars of the country's emerging fabric, is an example: the start-up has developed an alternative to diesel generators that generates and stores energy to support strategic infrastructure. And they did it, as recalled by Anna Martín (Barcelona, 2001), co-founder and CEO of the company, on Fridays after class.
Atom H2 is the work of Martin herself along with her classmates in the industrial design degree at Elisava, Marcel Rovira and Mariona Figueras, and the then-student of the Institut Químic de Sarrià, Lucas Vicén. In the first instance, Martin and Rovira met "every Friday afternoon to work on our own project." "We realized that a lot of renewable energy was being generated, but storage is a major bottleneck," recalls the co-founder. Then Vicén joined, who brought the chemical "vision" to a solution based on hydrogen, "a very good option for maintaining long-duration energy."
By 2022, the three students already had a prototype of what would later become the Atom H2 product: an eight-foot container that integrates solar panels, lithium batteries, and their solid-state hydrogen system, the company's innovative core. It was then that they presented themselves at the ImaginPlanet Challenge by CaixaBank, which allowed them to incubate the product in Silicon Valley. "We already had a prototype, but we were missing the business side, and there we found a very interesting industrial part," observes Martin.
Upon returning from the USA, they turned the initiative into their final degree project, a phase in which Figueras joined them. "We worked on it as a product, but also on market validation: we spoke with companies, and we saw that the sector most in need was telecommunications," recalls the co-founder. In 2024, in fact, it is one of the emerging companies selected by the Cellnex Foundation, with a successful pilot test at their facilities. Later, Marc Perales, in charge of software, joined the founding team.
Since then, recognition has lined up for the company: in 2024 alone, Atom took home the national phase of the prestigious James Dyson Design Award. This year they received one of the EmprènXXI awards, presented by CaixaBank DayOne, and the magazine Forbes has included the four founders in its list of the 100 most creative people in the business world.
The potential of the solution is extremely broad: "Even when we were creating the product, we had a vision for it that was scalable, modular, and adaptable to different places and locations," recalls Martin. Its fit in such a strategic field as telecommunications offers a market with almost no limits. In fact, by 2028 the company expects to deploy a hundred units of its generator, and they aspire to reach 700 operational units by 2030, both within Spain and abroad. "The product fits the market: there are clients asking for our solution," celebrates the CEO.
