We are proud to have led ecoLocked‘s €4M funding round together with Climentum Capital, and are delighted to have existing investors Counteract, Startup Family Office, Sabanci Building Solutions, and VOYAGERS.io joining the round. The investment will support ecoLocked’s mission to revolutionize the construction industry with carbon-negative building materials.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are a vital tool in combating climate change. With its innovative approach of transforming solid atmospheric carbon into high-performing building materials, ecoLocked offers biochar producers access to a highly scalable end application and unlocks the built environment as the largest human-made carbon sink.

Its first product line, eLM Zero, is an admix material, enabling carbon-neutral concrete. Multiple concrete producers in the DACH region and the Netherlands have already embedded eLM Zero into their product portfolio. Additionally, ecoLocked collaborates with prominent players in the cement industry and work with municipalities and real estate developers to bring down construction projects’ footprint.

“In order to stay well below 2 degree warming, emissions reduction won´t be enough: carbon will need to be removed from the air and stored safely. Biochar is among the cheapest and most scalable solutions to do it, and its addition to building materials provides an effective way to decarbonize the built environment, immediately” shares Ines Kolmsee, General Partner at Matterwave Ventures. “In this context ecoLocked plays the vital role of linking the biochar market to the building materials industry”.

“Emissions from building materials account for 15% of European carbon emissions and are one of the hardest to avoid. We looked at a broad range of technologies and decided to invest into ecoLocked as it offers a solution that works now and can be combined with future decarbonization technologies for concrete” notes Dörte Hirschberg, General Partner at Climentum Capital, a venture capital firm investing in European champions of decarbonization.

ecoLocked will use the fresh funds to expand its production plant, launch additional product lines, and accelerate the offtake of its products. With investments in its R&D team, ecoLocked is furthermore set to expand its AI-driven platform which enables them to make use of the feedstock variability – generally the key challenge for the construction sector – to efficiently create consistent, high-quality products for specific segments.

‍”I firmly believe that the future of carbon removal lies in developing products that not only store captured carbon for long periods, but also become valuable resources for local industries, such as the construction sector. The fresh funding will allow us to expand our product portfolio and scale up ouroperations with the help of strong new partners.”, says Dr. Mario Schmitt, CEO of ecoLocked.