Direct Air Capture (DAC) Activation Sirona Technologies We raised 6 million euros in a seed round.
Founded in Brussels in 2023 and led by ex-Tesla engineers, Sirona Technologies focuses on speed, scalability and low capital expenditure design.
Reversing climate change using DAC has gone from a fringe idea that would never work to a vital part of any climate mitigation plan, with the first commercial plants now operating.
As well as phasing out fossil fuels and dramatically reducing emissions, the DAC's role will be to remove one trillion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere – needed to offset emissions that are hard to avoid and clean up past emissions – using machines that filter huge amounts of air to remove the CO2, which will then be injected and stored permanently in geological formations, where it will be transformed into rock over a two-year period.
There are many methods for removing CO2 from the air, but DAC is considered the gold standard because it is highly scalable, permanent, and verifiable.
According to Toralf Gutierrez, CEO and co-founder of Sirona Technologies, the amount of CO2 that would need to be removed from the atmosphere is so large it's difficult to comprehend.
“To plant trees, we would have to cover an area the size of Asia.
Direct air capture would require a 150km x 150km solar panel array to power the machines, which would amount to about 10% of the clean energy built up by 2050. Both have a role to play, but forests alone clearly won't be enough.“
In just the first year, Sirona Technologies has built three generations of prototypes capable of capturing one tonne of CO2 per year.
Now they're developing the next generation of machines that will be able to capture 20 times that amount by July.
Sirona Technologies will deploy its machinery to partner with local stakeholders to build the first capture plant in Kenya. A pilot plant is expected to be up and running by the end of this year and a full-scale commercial plant by early 2026, with the goal of gradually scaling up to capturing 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.
LocalGlobe and XAnge co-led the round. Investors also included Look Up Ventures, Satgana, VOYAGERS Climate-Tech Fund, Syndicate One and Renaud Visage.
This capital injection will provide the impetus for Sirona Technologies to scale up its Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology and deploy its first pilot plant in Kenya.
Main image: Sirona Technologies. Photo: Uncredited.
