Efferon wants to eradicate the devastating toll of pediatric sepsis; plus, Petra Power looks to modernize energy for data centers

0:01Petra Power: This is TechCrunch.

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1:13Petra Power: That's Framer.com slash tcstartups. Rules and restrictions may apply. Sepsis is an acute inflammation triggered by infection, and it is a leading cause of childhood mortality, claiming roughly 3 million children under the age of 5 annually. Everon, a startup selected as one of TechCrunch Disrupt's 2026's startup Battlefield 200, is on a mission to drastically lower that number. The company has developed a medical device that it says lowers organ failure rates and significantly accelerates recovery in children. When standard treatments like antibiotics cannot stop the immune system's overreaction, a patient's blood must be filtered to remove deadly toxins.

1:59Petra Power: That is where Efron's devices, of absorbers of dangerous cytokines and toxins, step in to make a critical difference. Dima Romachin, Eferon's co-founder and CEO, compares what happens in the body during sepsis to a fire, where an immune response overwhelms the body rapidly. In sepsis, endotoxins are the flames and cytokines are the smoke. Eferon, unlike other devices on the market, has developed a mechanism that can absorb both at once. Although Eferon makes absorbers for adults, Ephron Neo, its pediatric device developed specifically for young kids, is proving especially effective. Since children have a significantly lower circulating blood volume, they require medical devices engineered specifically for their physiology.

2:49Petra Power: In April, Ephron Neo received a CE mark, Europe's equivalent to FDA approval, making it the first multimodal blood purification device specifically engineered for pediatric sepsis. Eferon Neo is used in intensive care units across 30 countries, including European hospitals, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand. The company is now preparing to file for FDA approval and is on track to hit$2 million in annualized revenue by the end of this year. The startup's technology was originally developed by scientists at Moscow State University, including co-founder Ivan Besenov. Recognizing its potential, Romishin, a serial entrepreneur, stepped in earlier this year as CEO to help commercialize it.

3:37Petra Power: Although Romishin admits that Eferon is not growing at the breakneck pace of today's AI startups, true success for the company is measured by something else entirely. every child who gets to go home. Well, as AI gobbles up an ever-larger amount of energy, the hunt is on for efficient and cost-effective power sources. One of the companies leading that charge is PetraPower. Petra was founded back in 2017, and it sells solid oxide fuel cells, ceramic devices that convert fuel like natural gas, into electric power without burning it. The company markets them as a more efficient and environmentally friendly way to operate data centers and large vehicles.

4:25Petra Power: Petra's founder, Aaron Goodman, told TechCrunch that his company's product has significantly lower fuel costs and emissions than traditional power sources, and that they have much less of a physical footprint as well because they're more compact and lightweight. The efficiency and the cost savings that come with it is what makes the fuel cells attractive. Goodman said, Combustion takes fuel and creates explosions. Those explosions create heat. That heat creates motion. The motion powers an electromotive force, which eventually creates electricity. It's a lot of steps, and they all have so much loss in them that you end up with a really inefficient system.

5:05Petra Power: Petra's fuel cells skip most of those steps. What fuel cells do is they take the electrons directly off of the fuel, so they strip the fuel of its electrons, which creates electricity. It's one step, no loss, and subsequently, in theory at least, they're much, much more efficient, he said. As a result, companies that run off fuel cells stand to save a significant amount on fuel costs. Although it may offer an innovative product, the customer base is still emerging for Petra. Goodman said that his company is targeting two different types of customers, data centers and the defense Department. Goodman does not want to reveal specific agreements just yet, but said Petra is currently working with NeoClouds and other infrastructure providers that were a few steps down from the hyperscaler crowd.

5:54Petra Power: The target for first deployment with these customers is 2028, with full-scale production for the company hopefully set for 2029. Goodman said, hyperscalers are an ICP, or ideal customer profile for us, and we talk a lot to them, but we don't have anything firm with them yet. We're still kind of working in that direction. Obviously, they're the largest consumers of power. They're the ones that we can make the biggest impact with, so that's where we'd like to go. The other customer, the government, is also still taking shape. The idea is that Petra's fuel cells will be able to provide auxiliary power for land vehicles, meaning electricity for onboard equipment when the main engine is off.

6:38Petra Power: But Petra's product has not actually deployed on a live vehicle yet. Instead, Goodman says the fuel cells are in the testing phase, during which the government is deciding whether to move forward. Petra is a small team, about 15 people, but the company is growing. Petra has so far received nearly$9 million in contracts from the Defense Department, and the hope is to scale that work significantly in the coming years. Petropower was selected for this year's TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200, a group of 200 startups chosen for the program, and you can catch all the action this coming week in downtown San Francisco at Moscone West.

7:20Petra Power: That's all for now. For the latest in startup tech news, go to techcrunch.com.

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