London-headquartered synthetic fuel specialist Rivan has secured $34 million in its latest funding round to advance work on Europe’s largest synthetic natural gas (SNG) production plant.
Led by early-stage VC firm IQ Capital, the round also saw participation from previous investor Plural, as well as new investor Fundomo and angels including Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face), Matt Clifford (Entrepreneur First), and Markus Villig (Bolt).
With this latest funding round, the total support secured by the company to date comes to $46 million. This will enable Rivan to scale domestic SNG production in Europe as part of its ambition of becoming the next energy major.
Specifically, the funding will power the deployment of Europe’s largest SNG plant and will support the launch of a new 50,000 sq ft manufacturing facility in London, enabling Rivan to grow its team to 100 people.
Founded in 2024 by serial entrepreneur Harvey Hodd, Rivan has come up with a process that vertically integrates every step of SNG production, starting from renewable energy all the way through to gas grid injection.
The company uses solar energy to produce green hydrogen from electrolysis and direct air capture (DAC) technology to capture atmospheric CO2 emissions, combining the two to produce carbon-neutral natural gas via a reactor.
According to Rivan, the resulting SNG is chemically identical to natural gas and can be injected directly into existing pipelines and storage infrastructure. As its operations grow, the company expects SNG to reach cost parity with fossil gas.
Its SNG production process offers a reliable, domestically produced energy alternative in a dynamic and uncertain global market, aiming to serve industries that cannot be electrified.
Relevant: Rivan Secures $13M To Advance Synthetic Fuel Production
In the past year, Rivan has built the UK’s largest SNG plant, tripling its customer contracts and starting work on a new London-based manufacturing facility that will enable the production of its systems on an industrial scale. The company is also collaborating with Wales & West Utilities to deliver the UK’s first grid-connected commercial SNG project.
Going forward, within the next decade, Rivan aims to produce more than 1 billion cubic meters of SNG annually, matching almost 20% of the current UK industrial gas demand, while also removing millions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Read more: Podcast: “DAC can pay for itself,” Harvey Hodd, Rivan Industries CEO
