Heirloom Secures $150M Amid Busy Year For Carbon Capture Funding

Heirloom, a direct air capture company that uses modified limestone to pull CO₂ from the atmosphere, announced Wednesday that it has raised $150 million in Series B funding.

The fundraise boosted total investment to date for the 4-year-old, Brisbane, California-based company to more than $200 million. Lead investors in the latest round include Future Positive and Lowercarbon Capital.

Heirloom’s financing comes amid a boom period for investment around carbon capture, storage and transformation, which is increasingly seen as a vital part of efforts to move us closer to net zero. Per Crunchbase data, funding to the space is on track to hit the highest or second-highest annual tally since we began tracking the category.

For its part, Heirloom is looking to stand out in the direct air capture, or DAC, space for its cost-competiveness and scalability.

“We believe DAC is all about cost, cost, and cost — and that it will only scale to make a meaningful difference on climate change if it is affordable,” Heirloom CEO Shashank Samala said in a statement accompanying the funding announcement.

He added that in his view, Heirloom has “a clear trajectory to the lowest-cost DAC solution.”

Currently, Heirloom is working on several projects. It’s a participant in Project Cypress, a Louisiana DAC hub that aims to bring a million tons of annual CO₂ removal capacity. Last year, the company also began operating a commercial DAC facility in Tracy, California, after signing a carbon removal deal with Microsoft.

It’s one of several startups in the space scaling up, and attracting capital to do so.

In the first three quarters of this year, startups with business models tied to carbon capture, storage and transformation closed on close to $1.2 billion in equity and debt financing, per Crunchbase data. Some of the largest funding recipients included the following.

Both strategic and climate-focused investors are backing these efforts. Heirloom, for instance, also brought several strategic investors into its latest round, including Japan Airlines, Mitsubishi Corp. (Americas), Mitsui & Co. and Siemens Financial Services.