Noya, a San Francisco-based climate tech company, has raised an $11M Series A financing round, led by New York-based Union Square Ventures (also backed Clue) and Collaborative Fund.
Participating investors include Lowercarbon Capital, Fifty Years, MCJ Collective, EQT Foundation, Climate Capital, Nexwell Group, and a confidential university endowment.
This investment will enable Noya to expand testing and manufacturing capabilities, hire new team members, and deploy their first commercial pilot later this year.
As part of their investment, Fred Wilson and Sophie Bakalar from Collaborative Fund have joined Noya’s board of directors.
“Carbon removal is critical for the planet to meet its climate targets,” says Fred Wilson, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures. “We believe direct air capture can become the leading way to perform carbon removal, and Noya’s low capex, high modularity process can become the leading direct air capture approach. USV is thrilled to support Noya through its future scale-up and growth.”
Direct Air Capture technology
Noya PBC was founded in 2020 by Josh Santos (CEO) and Daniel Cavero (CTO) with a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to carbon negativity through innovative Direct Air Capture technology that is scalable and cost-effective.
Direct Air Capture is a process that captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts it into useful products or stores it underground.
The company’s focus is on removing society’s historic CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.
“By developing and deploying Direct Air Capture technology, we will be able to scale carbon removal to the volumes and costs needed to meet global climate targets,” Santos says. “We are deeply committed to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to help restore our shared planet.”
Noya’s technology has already gained the trust of industry leaders like Shopify and Watershed, who have each purchased Noya’s carbon removal credits.
The company is also announcing the signing of its latest carbon removal agreement with a confidential university endowment.
This multi-year deal will help the university’s endowment reach its sustainability goals with high-quality, permanent carbon removal credits.
“We believe Noya’s approach to DAC will allow them to scale quickly and deliver low-priced CDR in the near term,” said Stacy Kauk, Shopify’s Head of Climate and a member of Collaborative’s Sustainability Advisory Board. “We’re very impressed with how the team put our upfront payment to work, quickly using it to build a pilot unit to refine the most critical components of their technology.”
“At Collab, our mission has always been to bring planet-improving technologies out of the lab and into the mainstream,” says Sophie Bakalar, Partner at Collaborative Fund. “What Noya is doing is building a technological foundation for global sustainable change. DAC is one of the most promising pathways to scale affordable, high-quality CDR, and they’re scaling this technology at a rate we’ve never seen before. We’re excited to be working alongside them and Fred as we embark on what is a true world changing climate journey.”