ARPA-E tracks key early indicators that help illustrate how the advanced R&D funded by the Agency can potentially turn into commercial impact, including private-sector follow-on funding, new company formation, partnership with other government agencies, publications, inventions, and patents. Since 2009, ARPA-E has provided approximately $4.07 billion in R&D funding for more than 1,690 potentially transformational energy technology projects.

ARPA-E recently announced that many of its project teams have continued to advance their technologies: 166 new companies have formed; 416 licenses have been issued for ARPA-E tech; 372 have partnered with another government agency; and 235 teams have together raised more than $13.5 billion in private-sector follow-on funding to continue to advance their technology toward the market. Moreover, ARPA-E projects have helped advance scientific understanding and technological innovation through 7,818 peer-reviewed journal articles and 1,187 patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

After over a decade, ARPA-E is starting to count exits through public listings, mergers, and acquisitions. ARPA-E has 32 exits as of September 2024, with a total reported value of $22.2 billion at the time of the deals. These indicators demonstrate that ARPA-E’s approach to selecting, funding, and actively managing early-stage energy R&D continues to pay off, advancing the state of the art in energy science and engineering and defining new opportunities for commercialization of advanced energy technologies.

As mandated by ARPA-E’s authorizing statute, the National Academy of Sciences completed in June 2017 a review of ARPA-E that provides an independent assessment of the impact of the agency over its first few years of operation. The report can be accessed on the NAS website.

Impact Sheets

ARPA-E analyzes and catalogues some of the Agency’s most successful projects through its “impact sheets,” which explore a sampling of individual projects and their achievements.

The Agency’s first compilation booklet of impact sheets was published in 2016, a second volume was released in 2017, and a third volume in 2018. Click the thumbnails below to learn more and download a PDF copy.

Volume 1

Published: August 2016

Volume 2

Published: February 2017

Volume 3

Published: May 2018