Chevron, others invest $150M into Carbon Clean

Carbon Clean Solutions, a carbon capture startup for heavy industry, raised $150 million in Series C funding led by Chevron.

Why it matters: Carbon Clean's funding round is among the largest for a carbon capture startup serving specific industries, indicating the buzz hasn't yet worn off.

Driving the news: The round included a heavy dose of strategic investors for Carbon Clean in addition to Chevron.

• New investors were AXA Investment Managers, Samsung Ventures, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and TC Energy.
• Existing investors Cemex Ventures, Marubeni Corporation and Wave Equity Partners re-upped.
• Carbon Clean declined to disclose the valuation of the round.

How it works: Carbon Clean makes a modular piece of hardware that uses rotators to remove carbon dioxide from heavy industrial plants.

• CEO Aniruddha Sharma compared the technology to that of a washing machine, and said the rotating motion helps increase the surface area to better pull carbon out of gaseous material.
• Carbon Capture has units at 40 sites across multiple countries — including a cement plant in Japan and a steel facility in India — and has captured 1.5 million metric tons of carbon to date, Sharma tells Axios.

The intrigue: Sharma says that Carbon Clean does not touch the carbon credit market and instead leaves the potential revenue generated from its projects to its customers.

• For large emitters like Chevron, that could translate to billions of dollars in credits back into its bottom line.

What's next: As part of the funding round, Carbon Clean is taking on a carbon capture project with a Chevron coal burning plant in California's San Joaquin Valley.