Exclusive: Climate-friendly concrete startup nabs $15M
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Cocoon Carbon, a startup developing climate-friendly building materials, just closed a $15 million Series A round to support a large planned U.S. demonstration plant.
Why it matters: Cement used in concrete is a huge CO2 source. Cocoon sees a growing market for its substitutes — even as tackling climate change has lost clout in boardrooms and governments.
- "Unlike other emerging alternatives to cement, Cocoon's product is cost competitive and doesn't demand a prohibitive 'green premium' that has historically limited uptake of new solutions in the market," the announcement states.
Driving the news: 2150 and Brick & Mortar Ventures led the round, which included TVC and existing backers Wireframe Ventures, Celsius Industries, Gigascale Capital, and SOSV.
The big picture: Cocoon's tech uses abundant byproducts from electric arc furnace steel mills, turning this "slag" into its product with a system "retrofitted directly into existing waste handling processes."
- It cuts the "embodied" CO2 of concrete by 40%, Cocoon said.
- And it sees an opening, noting that "supplementary cementitious materials" (SCM) to increase strength and durability have long come from coal plants and iron blast furnaces that are increasingly shutting down.
State of play: "The problem we're looking to solve is the lack of availability or supply [of SCM]. The product that we create to meet demand, and the growth in demand, is driven by multiple factors," said co-founder and CEO Eliot Brooks.
- "One is the low embodied carbon, but two is that these products are always cheaper per ton than cement," he said in an interview.
- If a builder wants to cut per-unit cost of concrete, maximizing use of SCM is "going to be the easiest, most effective way of doing it," he said.
- Brooks argues that major cement companies are still under shareholder pressure to decarbonize.
What's next: It's looking to break ground this year on a large demo plant — location as-yet undetermined — that would produce around 10,000 tons per year.
- That's around 5% to 10% of the output of the commercial plants Cocoon envisions.
- Cocoon hopes to have operations at 50 sites in the U.S. and Europe by 2035.
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