Heirloom, a Brisbane, CA-based Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology provider, raised $150M in Series b funding.
The round was led by Future Positive, and Lowercarbon Capital. New investors included Future Positive, H&M Group, Japan Airlines Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas), Mitsui & Co., Ltd., MOL Switch LLC, Quantum Innovation Fund, and Siemens Financial Services among others.
The company intends to use the funds to continue to drive down the cost of the technology, develop additional projects and provide the funding needed to subsequently access infrastructure capital.
Led by CEO Shashank Samala, Heirloom has developed technology that enhances the limestone, the world’s second most abundant, and one of the cheapest, minerals, to capture CO2 directly from the air. Its process starts with natural limestone, nearly 50% of which is CO2. By extracting this CO2 from the limestone and adding water, the Heirloom process creates a material that is thirsty for CO2 so it can return to a natural limestone state. This material acts like a sponge, pulling CO2 from the atmosphere.
Heirloom’s technology accelerates this process, reducing the time it takes to absorb CO2 in nature from years to just three days. Once the CO2 is absorbed, it is extracted from the limestone material using a renewable energy-powered kiln and stored permanently underground.
Since its founding in 2020, the company is part of the team building Project Cypress — a Department of Energy supported DAC Hub, which is eligible for up to $600 million in government funding, and which will bring one million tons of yearly CO2 removal capacity to Louisiana and will create nearly 1,000 new jobs. Late last year, Heirloom began operating North America’s first commercial DAC facility in Tracy, California, shortly after signing one of the largest CO2 removal deals to date with Microsoft. The company has also signed deals to provide carbon removal to Stripe, Meta, Shopify, JPMorgan, McKinsey, Workday, H&M Group, Autodesk, and others.
FinSMEs
04/12/2024