Carbon Capture has announced a $35 million Series A fundraising round. The company is a climate-tech firm that creates machines to capture carbon dioxide from the environment. With this new round of fundraising, the company now has over $43 million in total equity funding. The latest fundraising round was led by Prime Movers Lab and included Rio Tinto, Idealab Studio, Idealab X, Marc Benioff’s Time Ventures, and a number of other venture capital firms. These funds will be used in product development and initial deployments of the company’s renewable energy-powered (solar and geothermal) Direct Air Capture (DAC) devices across the United States.
As per the company statement, it had developed a set of technical innovations that use zeolites for capturing carbon dioxide as part of a commercial DAC system. Zeolites are inorganic, inexpensive, long-lasting, and non-toxic molecular sieves. Zeolites are manufactured in large quantities for several industrial applications, removing a significant barrier for the economic scaling of DAC to gigaton levels. These DAC systems are adjustable, and can lower carbon dioxide output purity to coincide with storage solutions that do not require food-grade purity.
CarbonCapture was created at Idealab Studio, the technology incubator founded by serial entrepreneur Bill Gross. Other pioneering companies founded by Bill Gross that aim to make a major impact on global sustainability include Heliogen, a provider of AI-enabled concentrated solar power, and Energy Vault, a provider of gravity-based grid-scale energy storage.
REGlobal’s Views: With the increasing global focus on abatement of carbon emissions and countries announcing net zero strategies, carbon capture has also gained importance as a prominent technology. Going forward, more such companies offering innovative products and services are expected to emerge in this space.
