London-based Cocoon, a climate technology company enabling steel and concrete to decarbonise in tandem, has raised 拢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: 鈥淲e鈥檙e 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.
鈥淏y 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.
鈥淐onnecting these two industries allows builders to construct critical infrastructure while reducing emissions; for every ton of Cocoon鈥檚 slag-based cementitious material used, one ton of CO2 can be avoided.鈥�
Mike Schroepfer, partner at Gigascale Capital, said: 鈥淐ocoon 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.
鈥淕lobal 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鈥檚 growing infrastructure needs with the time required to develop new materials.鈥�
Lily Bernicker, principal at Wireframe and incoming board member, said: 鈥淩educing the carbon intensity of the cement industry is imperative to meeting our climate goals, and will require a portfolio approach.
鈥淭his 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鈥檚 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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