The New York-based Air Company, a carbon-tech firm that makes alcohol and consumer goods from captured carbon is today announcing it has closed its Series A round, netting $30M in funding. Carbon Direct Capital Management, the partners that led the funding round, will also join Air Capital’s board.
Other investors in this round included Toyota Ventures, JetBlue Technology Ventures, and Parley for the Oceans and helped bring the company’s total funding to north of $40M.
The funding’s purpose
Air Company is intending to use this new capital infusion to construct its third facility in a bid to rapidly ramp up its CO2-derived alcohol production. This state-of-the-art factory will house Air Company’s newly designed commercial-scale carbon utilization system, its largest to date. This system will be committed to exponentially increasing the production of CO2-derived ethanol and sustainable fuels. Since the proprietary technology can scale across many verticals, the company hopes to address a global mitigation potential of 10.8% of global CO2 emissions, which is over 4.6B tonnes of CO2 annually.
Besides supporting the brand’s efforts to continue scaling its consumer products to meet demand, Air Company is eyeing the aerospace sector following a successful demonstration with NASA. Air Company was able to create products from alcohols to sugars and proteins using only the resources available on Mars.
“This new growth capital will provide us with the resources to continue to bring our vision to life, ensuring we consistently deliver the highest quality products to meet our consumer demands while continually working with world-class talent on technology optimization on a pathway toward true scale,” explained Dr Stafford Sheehan, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of Air Company. “Our immediate goal at Air Company is to further improve and scale our technology that converts carbon dioxide into the cleanest, lowest carbon intensity alcohols for consumer products, on the path to industrial applications.”
Mimicking photosynthesis
You read that right! Air Company has created a patented technology that mimics photosynthesis to convert CO2 into impurity-free alcohols that can be used to create a variety of consumer goods. The company debuted its signature alcoholic beverage, Air Vodka, the world’s first alcoholic beverage made directly from CO2 in 2019.
Following Air Vodka’s launch, the brand has commercially released two more CO2-based consumer products; the Air Spray hand sanitiser and fragrance known as Air Eau de Parfum. This is increasingly cementing Air Company’s position as the industry leader for infused captured carbon products globally.
Founded by Gregory Constantine and Staff Sheehan in 2017, Air Company exists with the goal of enabling new possibilities, redefining the border of what is possible. The Air Company team is increasingly working to combat one of the most challenging problems facing humanity today, anthropogenic climate change. Air Company’s primary goal is to utilize as much CO2 as possible, creating a climate-positive impact.
“Air Company is pioneering carbon utilization technology that has the potential to reshape consumer industries in the short term, and speciality chemicals and fuels in the long term,” commented Jonathan Goldberg, CEO of Carbon Direct. “We are incredibly excited to support Gregory, Stafford and the entire Air Company team at this accelerating stage of the company’s growth.”