Gigaton, the London-based AI company formerly known as Carbon Re, has raised £19.3m ($26m) in Series A funding led by Plural.
Gigaton is replacing the control software that runs energy-intensive industries and is already deployed by several of the world’s largest cement producers, including Adani Cement, Heidelberg Materials and Holcim, which are saving more than $1m per year in energy costs and emissions.
The Series A raise included participation from 2150, Semapa Next and existing investors Planet A Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, UCL Technology Fund managed by AlbionVC with UCL Business, and Clean Growth Fund.
It brings Gigaton’s total funding to more than $35m (£26m).
This will fund a five-fold increase in its workforce and expansion into the steel, glass and chemicals sectors, enabling its mission to strengthen industrial control and reduce emissions.
Josh Vernon, CEO of Gigaton, said: “Every cement executive I speak to is facing the same challenges: costs they struggle to control, carbon they struggle to reduce, and plants that weren’t built for the world they’re operating in today.
“The underlying software infrastructure most plants run on today was never built to manage the complexity that plants are forced to deal with.
“We have built Gigaton to deliver real cost and carbon savings now while building the AI infrastructure these industries need in a fully autonomous future.”
Gigaton spent five years inside control rooms, understanding exactly why existing systems fail.
Its self-learning technology operates deep within plant infrastructure, simulating process behaviour and forecasting the impact of each action before it is taken, allowing it to autonomously adjust key parameters, including fuel mix, kiln speed and oxygen levels.
Gigaton CEO Josh Vernon
The AI platform is designed to replace the existing control stack rather than sit on top of it like a conventional solution. This results in lower energy and fuel costs, reduced emissions and greater stability for operators.
Crucially, operators can see precisely why each action is taken, and the system adapts to changing plant conditions by continuously retraining on live plant data.
Carina Namih, partner at Plural, said: “Cement, glass and steel are the materials civilisation runs on, but producing them consumes about a quarter of global energy.
“The Gigaton team combines deep AI expertise with years spent inside these plants, understanding how they actually operate.
“By running a single facility using Gigaton’s AI, Adani, Heidelberg and Holcim are already saving millions a year. The scale from here is enormous.”
Founded in 2020 as Carbon Re and spun out of UCL and the University of Cambridge, Gigaton works with some of the world’s largest industrial producers.
Based in Tallinn, Estonia, and London, Plural was founded in 2022 and is an early-stage investment fund that backs ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology.