Berlin-based NeoCarbon, a tech startup focusing on carbon removal from industrial sites, secures €3.2M in a Seed round of funding.
The investment was led by RAISE Seed For Good, with additional support from NeoCarbon’s initial backers PT1 – Proptech1 Ventures, Speedinvest, and Antler.
The funding round of the Direct Air Capture (DAC) startup also included several new high-profile angel investors like Christian Vollmann and Matthias Gotta, complementing the private investors who joined the company’s Pre-Seed round in the summer of 2022.
Sophia Martin, co-head at RAISE Ventures says, “DAC is, and will stay, a critical topic, as it is the only way to achieve carbon neutrality and provide a scalable approach to mitigate the effects of climate change.”
“With a decentralised approach, Neocarbon is the first autonomous system that leverages existing infrastructures and captures CO2 scalably,” adds Martin.
Transition to a carbon-negative world
Currently, only 27 DAC plants globally capture a combined total of around 10,000 tons of CO2 per year, falling significantly short of climate targets. The cost per unit of CO2 removed remains up to 10 times higher than economically viable prices.
NeoCarbon addresses this by retrofitting existing infrastructure, substantially reducing upfront costs and time investments for building capture systems.
According to the company, this approach has the potential to enhance mass-market adoption, paving the way for capturing several gigatons of CO2 annually from ambient air.
NeoCarbon‘s proprietary reactor for Direct Air Capture technology is set for a Q1 2024 pilot with a major industrial partner.
Capital utilisation
NeoCarbon secures new funding to speed up unit deployment by establishing an operations team and completing the first full-scale capture unit.
The use of proprietary reactor technology is expected to reduce capture costs, paving the way for the company to enter the era of industrial-scale capture. The company’s goal is to attain a substantial share of the global Direct Air Capture installed capacity.
René Haas, NeoCarbon CEO says, “Every year, the climate crisis is causing more tangible and costly damages. Thus, experts from leading climate research like the IPCC are now urging actions to scale CO2 removal as fast as possible.”
“NeoCarbon is a core actor of this impactful mission, and with our first unit being rolled out in the coming months to one of our partners’ industrial sites, we are starting to see the tangible impact of our company.”
“We need to accelerate this rollout, and the Seed round will enable us to answer demand better and faster, to reach the climate potential of NeoCarbon,” adds Haas.
NeoCarbon has implemented a fully autonomous demonstrator in Spring 2023. The company is now finalising rollouts of a second-generation system to a customer’s site by Q1 2024.