Before founding a cleantech company, Kamyar Rouindej was balancing a full-time role as a corporate energy manager at the Region of Waterloo while completing his full-time PhD in engineering at the University of Waterloo. One day, while looking for suitable energy storage options for a municipal facility, it hit him.
"I kind of had this aha moment. What if we could develop a scaled-down version of the storage tech I was studying? It could solve a lot of the issues we were facing,” he said.
That moment led to the creation of Volta Technique, a Waterloo-based startup now drawing global attention for its patented approach to storing clean energy using compressed air.
The company’s technology, called Small Modular Compressed Air Energy Storage (SMCAES), captures surplus energy from sources like wind and solar, compresses air to store it, and releases the air to generate electricity when demand peaks. The goal is to create a safe, sustainable, and scalable alternative to battery-based storage.
After four years of development, Volta secured its first U.S. patent at the end of 2024. In 2025, the company added a second U.S. patent and one from the European Union.
"That’s four years of sweat," Rouindej said. "There’s a big difference between talking about innovation and actually being able to prove it. These patents allow us to say, ‘We have a strong foothold in this field.'"
"That really adds to the fundamental value of the company, whether we continue building or get acquired, that IP is our bread and butter."
Career pivot to climate impact
Rouindej left a corporate tech job to pursue a master's degree in engineering, specializing in clean energy, only to end up in a PhD program that influenced the foundation of Volta’s technology.
"I didn’t do this because I like sleepless nights or the stress," he said. "I actually thought what I was doing meant something. It was a very personal mission for me."
That mission is now gaining traction. Volta has bootstrapped its way to success, raising roughly $500,000 in grants and early support. For the first time, the team is actively raising a pre-seed round to fund a pilot and scale from lab to real-world deployment.
"We’ve done this on our own so far, but now it’s time to move from lab scale to pilot scale," said Rouindej.
Scaling up from the 519
Volta may be global in its ambitions, but its story starts in Waterloo.
"I still think this is a great place to build," said Rouindej.
Rouindej says the local ecosystem has shown strong support for software companies.
“Communitech has supported us in accessing funding and programs that helped us identify opportunities within both the data and AI value chain in our company,” he said.
For his work in hardware, he says he looked beyond the region for testing and prototyping support.
"We need to diversify. We need to build more here, and we need long-term thinking. Not every important solution is or can be built in six months. Some of these problems are hard and worth solving."
For Volta, that’s exactly the point.
"The problem we’re solving still exists today. There’s no great solution out there," he said. "We’re trying to be that solution."
The technology may be complex, but Rouindej says the motivation behind it isn’t.
"At the end of the day, I just wanted to work on something I could be proud of."
