Between plant-based meat substitutes, e-vehicles and emerging carbon offsetting companies, a lot is being done to combat climate change, especially in the startup world.
Air Company, a New York-based carbon technology startup, is one of many companies aiming to use its technology to better the planet. On Tuesday, the company announced it pulled in $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Carbon Direct Capital Management.
“Carbon dioxide is the most abundant greenhouse gas on planet Earth causing climate change. So, what we do is we take captured carbon dioxide that’s otherwise emitted into the atmosphere and we combine it with hydrogen,” Gregory Constantine, Air Company CEO and co-founder, told Built In. “The product that it creates is a mixture of water, ethanol, methanol and paraffin. We take the ethanol and some of those other products and we sell them into some of the products that you see today.”
Some of Air Company’s current product offerings include Air Vodka, an alcoholic beverage made directly from carbon dioxide, and the fragrance Air Eau de Parfum. The company’s offerings have also caught the attention of NASA since its able to create alcohol, sugars, proteins and more using only the resources available on Mars, according to the company.
With its new funding, Air Company plans to scale the production of Air Vodka and build its third commercial-scale carbon utilization factory. Additional funding will also go toward new hires. Constantine said he expects the company will double in size from 35 employees to about 70 by the end of the year.
Air Company says it also plans to branch into the aerospace sector following this latest funding round.
“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,” Stafford Sheehan, CTO and co-founder of Air Company, said in a statement. “Ultimately, we aim to truly have an impact toward addressing climate change by utilizing waste and atmospheric carbon dioxide to displace fossil fuels at-scale; replacing the carbon that we currently extract from the ground, with carbon removed from the air.”
