Venture Capital: Air Company, Which Makes Carbon-Negative Vodka From Air, Scores $30M Raise

Air Company creates carbon-negative alcohols and consumer products from CO2.
In 2019, carbon technology startup Air Company launched Air Vodka, the world’s first alcoholic beverage made directly from carbon dioxide. The company announced Tuesday its Series A funding of $30 million led by Carbon Direct Capital Management with participation from Toyota Ventures, JetBlue Technology Ventures, and Parley for the Oceans. (CISION PR Newswire)
The company has now raised a cumulative sum of over $40 million and expanded its range to include a hand sanitizer, Air Spray, and a fragrance, Air Eau de Parfum.
The company’s technology has also proven itself in the creation of sugars and proteins from their alcohols together with NASA.
Use of funds
Air Company will use the new raise to finance its expansion into industrial and aerospace sectors and also scale up its production of consumer-facing products.
It intends to construct a third factory to house its newly designed commercial-scale carbon utilization system, its largest to date. This system will be dedicated to exponentially increasing the production of CO2-derived ethanol and sustainable fuels.
“As the proprietary technology can scale across many verticals, the company can potentially address up to 10.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which is over 4.6 billion tons of CO2 annually,” the company claimed in a statement.
Dr. Stafford Sheehan, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of Air Company, said: “Ultimately, we aim to truly have an impact toward addressing climate change by utilizing waste and atmospheric carbon dioxide to displace fossil fuels at-scale; replacing the carbon that we currently extract from the ground, with carbon removed from the air.”
Related Story: Carbon Removal Pioneer Climeworks Raises $650M

Latest Alternative Investment News

Digital Assets: Michael Saylor Unmoved By Crypto Weakness; “We Think It’s The Future Of Money”
Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), who is permanently bullish on bitcoin, reiterated his positive outlook for the leading crypto in an interview on Thursday. Note that MicroStrategy currently…

Digital Assets: Traditional Markets Could Suffer Contagion From (Un)Stablecoins (SEC Chair Gensler)
The crypto world was dealt a body blow by the collapse of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin earlier this month. The Terra meltdown is now being referred as crypto’s “Lehman moment.”…

Venture Capital: Big-Ticket Funding Rounds In Fintechs
Fast-growing, Southeast Asia-focused payments infrastructure platform Xendit closed on a US$300 million Series D funding co-led by Coatue and Insight Partners with additional investment from Accel, Tiger Global, Kleiner Perkins,…

FinTech: Sam Bankman-Fried Led FTX.US Makes Inroads Into Stock Trading
FTX Stocks is an equity trading platform offered through the FTX US trading application. FTX US announced Thursday a private beta phase trading on the platform for US customers selected…