Rivan, a UK-based startup focused on synthetic fuel technology, has raised £10 million (~$13.4 million) in a funding round led by Plural, with support from 20VC, NFDG (Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross), and angel investors Patrick and John Collison (Stripe).
The investment will fund continued R&D on Rivan’s electrolyser, direct air capture (DAC), and Sabatier reactor systems, and scale its pilot facility to 1MW.
Targeting hard-to-abate industries like steel, cement, and chemicals — which depend on natural gas and account for over a fifth of global emissions — Rivan is building modular plants powered by off-grid solar to produce synthetic natural gas (SNG).
These systems are designed in-house in the UK to speed up deployment and reduce costs, with the aim of injecting clean SNG into existing pipelines across the UK and Europe.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Harvey Hodd, Rivan is creating drop-in replacements for fossil fuels that work with current infrastructure but are carbon-neutral.
While synthetic fuels were historically too expensive due to energy input costs, the falling price of solar — declining by about 1% monthly — has changed the equation, making cost parity with fossil fuels increasingly realistic within the decade.
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Operating from a 10,000 sq ft facility in South London, Rivan has already deployed a 100kW pilot at a former military base, producing grid-compliant SNG using only air and water. The company is now scaling to 1MW as it prepares for larger commercial rollouts in 2026.
“Capturing the 12 gigatonnes of carbon emitted every year by heavy industry is one of the defining challenges of our time. For hard-to-abate industries like steel, cement, aviation and chemicals, neither carbon credits nor batteries paired with renewables provide a realistic solution,” said Harvey Hodd, founder and CEO of Rivan.
“Until we develop cost-effective synthetic fuels from carbon captured from the air, we can’t expect industry to decarbonise.”
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