A West Linn startup that was among the first in line to test its technology at Oregon’s new wave energy testing facility is shutting down operations after losing federal grant funding.

AquaHarmonics, a small business with three permanent staff and several subcontractors, began issuing layoffs Monday.

“We’ve been DOGEd,” AquaHarmonics CEO Alex Hagmüller said in April, referring to the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, initially headed by Elon Musk.

The agency has slashed federal grant funding for research and has been criticized and sued for its politicized approach, targeting diversity, equity and inclusion and climate initiatives.

“Effectively our funding is at a standstill,” Hagmüller said.

Headquartered in West Linn, AquaHarmonics has been around for nearly 10 years, launching as a startup after winning the Department of Energy’s $1.5 million Wave Energy Prize in 2016.

Some of the most energy-rich waves in the world can be found in the Pacific Northwest. There’s enough available energy in the waves off Oregon alone to power 6.4 million homes – that’s more homes than in Oregon and Washington combined.

Despite this, wave energy technology lags far behind other renewables like solar and wind, which both started receiving federal research investment beginning back in the 1970s. Significant federal focus on wave energy didn’t happen until 30 years later.

Since then, Hagmüller has been able to secure a string of federal grants designed to help kick-start wave energy as a renewable energy source for the United States. They’d developed several wave energy prototypes designed to convert the energy of offshore ocean waves into usable electricity.

Their latest converter was designed to power remote sensors like tsunami warning buoys and high-speed internet connectivity anywhere on the open ocean.

But they can’t do that without operating funds. The company had been waiting for money from an approved federal grant to come through, but now it doesn’t look like that will happen.

“This is a rough situation,” Hagmüller said. “It takes some time to pivot.”

And without their promised operating funds, keeping staff on while hoping for a turnaround is risky.

Like many wave energy developers in the United States, federal funding has been important for AquaHarmonics. Most recently, the company received a federal grant for a research partnership with Portland State University, which resulted in their latest design.

They’d obtained the first part of that money, and started a bureaucratic process last fall to trigger the release of the rest of the funds — essentially a “go-no-go” check-in with federal officials to ensure the company was meeting grant requirements and timelines.

With the next phase of funding, the company would have been on track to test their newest device at PacWave, Oregon’s new wave energy testing facility, as early as this September. Hagmüller said they were in line to be first in the water at the testing facility off the coast of Newport.

And the check-in with the Biden administration’s DOE went well.

“[It was] all green lights there and just waiting for a contract to be signed,” he said.

But it didn’t happen. Then the Trump administration took over. And the signature still didn’t come.

It’s unclear if DOGE is directly or indirectly responsible for holding up the approval. The Department of Energy didn’t return OPB’s request for comment and clarification on this situation.

The precariousness of federal funding for research and technology is a hard reality under the Trump administration. Grant programs across many science and technology fields have been cancelled, and billions in federal funding for research have been eliminated or delayed.

PacWave leadership is feeling the pain as well, sitting with a shiny new facility ready to push wave energy technology forward and no prospects of getting a developer’s wave energy converter into the water until next year.

“We anticipate the first cable-connected device to be in the water in the summer of 2026,” said PacWave chief scientist Burke Hales. “[Although] some of the political and federal upheaval has thrown some uncertainty into that timeline.”

PacWave has two developers lined up to deploy next year.

On Monday, AquaHarmonics’ grant officially ended, and Hagmüller started the process of laying off AquaHarmonics’ small staff.

The company has applied for two other federal grants and expected some indication one way or the other months ago, but so far, it hasn’t received any word from the DOE.

“It’s been pretty stressful. I’m grieving for us all,” Hagmüller said. “I don’t know where we go next.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/30/oregon-wave-energy-startup-aquaharmonics-shutting-down-doge-federal-funds/