Canadian cleantech startup Carbonova closes $6m to produce high-value carbon nanofibres

Carbonova, a startup that aims to turn greenhouse gas emissions into carbon materials for sustainable and inexpensive everyday essentials, announced it has closed its SAFE equity financing in an oversubscribed round of $6 million. The company intends to use the net proceeds from the financing to advance its strategy towards building the first commercial demonstration carbon nanofibers unit in Canada.

The financing round was led by Kolon Industries, a multi-billion-dollar Korean conglomerate. Kolon has a keen interest in Carbonova's technology applications in Asia, including batteries, plastics, and other materials.  Another major participant in this round was the Natural Gas Innovation Fund NGIF Capital, a venture capital firm focused on innovative technologies for improving the environmental performance of existing or renewable natural gas and hydrogen production. This round also saw strong participation from the company's directors, management, and staff team. This funding adds to the previously announced $2.5 million from Sustainable Development Technology Canada "SDTC" and the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program "NRC-IRAP" secured in February of 2023.

Mina Zarabian, CEO and Co-founder, Carbonova: "Carbonova's vision is to create everyday essentials from everyday emissions for everyone on earth, and with this financing, we are on track to complete the design of our first-of-a-kind commercial demo unit to put our vision into action. We have investors and customers from the wide spectrum of the carbon value chain validating the strong pull from the market for transitioning to this recycling of carbon to enhance the building blocks of virtually everything in modern society."

Carbonova currently produces carbon nanomaterials for customers at a pilot facility at the company's headquarters in northeast Calgary, Alberta. The commercial demonstration  expansion will result in unit production cost efficiencies and is forecast to reduce the CO₂ footprint of the carbon nanomaterials to below net-zero.

"Carbonova is on track to complete the front-end-engineering design (FEED) of its first commercial demo unit; the new design will represent a significant scale-up from Carbonova's existing pilot facility," said Zarabian. "The new plant will generate multiple hundreds of kilograms of carbon nanomaterials per day. This amount is sufficient to generate thousands of tons of sustainable end products and serve dozens of customers to bring their own innovative sustainable products in different sectors to the market."

www.carbonova.com