The direct air capture startup Mission Zero Technologies announced on May 12th the close of its latest seed funding round totaling $5 million. The investment comes from Breakthrough Energy Ventures founded by Bill Gates, and the global mining giant Anglo American.
Mission Zero Technologies plans to use the new funding to expand and accelerate its research and development activities and business operations, to support the delivery of both the designed 120 tons/year pilot plant and a subsequent planned first commercial project.
Relevant: Mission Zero And 44.01 Announced First Direct Air Capture And Mineralization Project
Two additional Board members will be joining the startup – Dr. Mark Hartney from Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Mark Freed from Anglo American that will provide expert steering for the company’s rapid growth.
The startup launched a 1000 tons of CO2 per year capacity direct air capture project with carbon mineralization company 44.01 in April 2022. The project was named Project Hajar and was awarded $1 million as one of fifteen Milestone Prize winners for the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition.
The startup continues to look for interested carbon capture utilization and storage partners, project developers, and equipment vendors globally to be able to implement its innovative direct air capture technology for CO2 abatement.
Relevant: Project Hajar Wins $1M From XPRIZE Carbon Removal Competition
“Going from concept to pilot and then to commercial scale in less than half a decade speaks volumes about how the world views our market’s potential as hyper-critical… This milestone is the first of many in our journey to fulfilling that potential aided with early backing from government, industry, and society,” said Dr Shiladitya Ghosh, CPO of MZT.
MZT forecasts it will play a major role in the direct air capture market as it wants to deliver CO2 removal at well under $100 per ton and supply it to end-users or sequestration facilities.
What helps the company optimize its process is that its solution has the potential to capture the emissions with the lowest energy requirement as electricity rather than heat is used to recover the CO2.
That also makes it easy to sequester it anywhere and according to Carmichael Roberts from Breakthrough Energy Venture, its core process is the same at almost any scale.
MZT is marking a critical milestone that will allow its continuous development and innovation. Carbon capture projects need more attention than ever to be able to accelerate rapidly to meet the growing needs for carbon removal.
