Houston clean hydrogen startup Syzygy announces sweeping layoffs
Syzygy Plasmonics, a darling of the Houston startup community, said it would slash more than half of its staff by the end of March in what may be the first dramatic blow to the local clean tech industry connected to Trump administration policies aimed at focusing American energy development on fossil fuels, advanced nuclear, geothermal and hydropower.
The company, which has raised more than $100 million in funding and last year received backing from Japanese industrial giant Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, has notified the state that it plans to layoff 68 employees beginning at the end of next month.
In a pair of Workforce Adjustment and Retraining Notification notices filed with the Texas Workforce Commission Feb. 5, the company said that beginning March 31 it plans to lay off 58 employees at its headquarters on South Sam Houston Parkway in Pearland and another 10 employees at its office on Kirby Drive in Houston.
The planned layoffs represent a reduction of more than half of the company’s workforce of about 110 employees, CEO Trevor Best said in an interview Thursday evening.
Best said,
This is one of those read-the-room situations,
“There’s been a global slowdown in clean technology deployment. In general, the energy transition is not moving as quickly as everyone had anticipated a couple of years ago, when we were ramping up the company’s operations. We’re adjusting the company to match the market.”
The Trump administration’s energy policies, under the direction of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, former CEO of Colorado-based oilfield services company Liberty Energy, played a role.
He said:
There is definitely a correlation between the new administration’s stance on clean energy and the executive orders that have come out and customer mentality and investor mentality, so they are definitely tied together,
Syzygy develops photoreactors that use light rather than combustion to power chemical reactions. The technology has the potential to change the way chemicals—including, crucially, hydrogen—are made and transported.
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Houston clean hydrogen startup Syzygy announces sweeping layoffs, source
