London-based Cocoon, a climate technology company enabling steel and concrete to decarbonise in tandem, has raised £4.2m ($5.4m).
The pre-seed funding comes from Wireframe Ventures, Celsius Industries, Gigascale Capital and SOSV.
The need for environmentally-friendly steel and concrete has never been greater with the World Economic Forum predicting the pace of building will grow over the next 40 years to the equivalent of constructing a new New York City every month.
Steel and concrete, essential for these projects, already contribute a staggering 14.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions, a figure that could balloon without intervention.
Cocoon’s modular technology takes slag (which is a by-product of steel manufacturing used to reduce the amount of polluting cement that goes into concrete) produced by electric furnaces and turns it into a near replacement for fossil fuel furnace slag.
Eliot Brooks, co-founder and CEO of Cocoon, said: “We’re turning a by-product with little use into a valuable product that the market badly needs and can be easily integrated into existing supply chains.
“By repairing a broken link in the circular economy, Cocoon provides steel makers with a new revenue stream while meeting the low-carbon material needs of the concrete industry.
“Connecting these two industries allows builders to construct critical infrastructure while reducing emissions; for every ton of Cocoon’s slag-based cementitious material used, one ton of CO2 can be avoided.”
Mike Schroepfer, partner at Gigascale Capital, said: “Cocoon is a perfect example of how narrowing in on a seemingly niche problem creates opportunities to deliver a cheaper, better product with meaningful climate impact.
“Global construction cannot halt for 20-30 years until green building materials are available at scale. Cocoon can put a unit in every electric steel plant in the next 10 years, bridging the gap between humanity’s growing infrastructure needs with the time required to develop new materials.”
Lily Bernicker, principal at Wireframe and incoming board member, said: “Reducing the carbon intensity of the cement industry is imperative to meeting our climate goals, and will require a portfolio approach.
“This sort of immediate progress can only come from a company like Cocoon. Their innovative technology takes advantage of existing feedstocks, workflows and supply chains to enable rapid scale up of low-carbon cement, all while increasing the profitability of sustainable steel operations.”
Led by co-founders Eliot Brooks, Will Knapp, and Freddie Scott, the company combines expertise in geology, engineering, and materials science.
Cocoon’s co-founders came together less than 15 months ago and have already delivered a minimum viable product (MVP) at lab scale.
They’re collaborating with a number of cement manufacturers to validate their slag-based cementitious material and will complete construction of a demo with a UK steel plant by the end of 2024, supported in part by $1m in grants from Innovate UK.
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