Vienna-based Sequestra wants to decarbonize hard-to-abate industries like metal production by locking carbon dioxide in industrial waste. The company raised €3 million ($3.5 million) in seed financing, led by Austria-based VSE Beteiligungs, a return investor.
Sequestra last year secured €1.1 million in a pre-seed round from Germany-based impact investor Carbon Drawdown Initiative, which backs carbon removal startups, and Climate Founders. The company landed a total of €3.3 million last year, including grants from institutions like the FFG Austrian Research Promotion Agency.
The fresh funding will help the company move from R&D into commercial pilots, Sequestra’s Roberto Lerche said. He added that the company is getting closer to “unleashing the carbon storage potential of large-scale, available, but underutilized mineral materials.”
Industrial waste
Steel, iron and cement production industries are some of the world’s top pollutants.
Sequestra’s accelerated carbonation technology mimics the natural process of mineralization, in which carbon reacts with minerals to form stone. The process binds carbon dioxide to industrial waste like steel slag or incineration ashes to produce carbonates, which can be used for construction materials like bricks, tiles and road filler. The company says its technology is able to lock up to one- third of a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of residue, depending on the feedstock.
In 2024, Switzerland-based Neustark, which also binds carbon dioxide into waste, raised $69 million from BlackRock and Temasek’s joint investment platform, Decarbonization Partners, along with Blume Equity, financial services group UBS, Siemens Financial Services and others (view Decarbonization Partners’ profile on ImpactAlpha Edge).
