SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 4, 2023 — Persist AI, the AI-driven pioneer in drug formulation, announced today the close of an oversubscribed $4M financing round following their completion of YCombinator, the prestigious San Francisco based startup accelerator. The funding round was led by 2048 Ventures with the participation of Innospark Ventures, Fellows Fund, YCombinator, Pioneer Fund, and others.

Pharmaceutical companies typically take up to five years to develop long-lasting drug injections to treat chronic conditions such as cancer and diabetes. Enter Persist, leveraging AI-driven automation to slash formulation development time by a staggering 50% – to just two years. “We complete microsphere pre-formulation for clients in weeks, not years,” stated CEO Karthik Raman.”

Over the past 6 months, Persist AI has developed cutting- edge robotics that enables automated development of long-acting injectable formulations. Coupled with AI models, they are able to rapidly predict which formulations will release drugs in the body for a long time and reduce the number of injections that patients need.

“Drug formulation has long been overlooked despite being a crucial part of drug development. Persist’s technology allows them to rapidly screen formulations, develop AI models that optimize the formulations, and then scale up formulations for human clinical use. We’re excited to invest in this groundbreaking technology,” said Alex Iskold, Managing partner of 2048 Ventures.

“Persist AI’s disruptive approach to drug formulation holds immense promise for the future of drug development.” Their AI-driven technology is set to revolutionize how we develop and optimize formulations for therapeutics of all kinds. We are proud to support their vision and contribute to their success,” said Matt Fates, Partner, Innospark Ventures.

About Persist AI

Persist AI specializes in building and optimizing long-acting injectable formulations, offering high-throughput formulation screening, automated drug release testing, method transfer and manufacturing scale-up. This helps drug manufacturers solve problems with drug clearance in the body, formulation instability, acute toxicity, shelf life and many other drug formulation related problems.

SOURCE Persist AI Formulations

Den Kurs der digitalen Gesundheitsentwicklung festlegen 

AUSTIN, Texas, 4. August 2023 — Significo Health, früher bekannt als Vilua Healthcare GmbH, hat heute ein entscheidendes Rebranding angekündigt.

Das Rebranding des Unternehmens folgt auf die strategische Mehrheitsbeteiligung der Unternehmer Rick McCartney und Chris Koha und eine erfolgreiche Finanzierungsrunde der Serie A über 12 Millionen US-Dollar. Mit zwei Jahrzehnten Erfahrung in der Bereitstellung von sicheren Software-Services für führende Organisationen im Gesundheitswesen in Deutschland ist Significo bereit, einen bedeutenden Einfluss auf die globale Health-Tech-Landschaft zu nehmen.

„Die Ankündigung dieses strategischen Rebrandings ist ein aufregender Moment für uns”, sagt Rick McCartney, CEO. „Wir sind nicht nur besser gerüstet, um unsere bestehenden Kunden unter dem Significo-Banner zu betreuen, sondern unser verstärktes Team ermöglicht es uns, den Nutzern auf der ganzen Welt ein sehr individuelles und wirkungsvolles digitales Gesundheitserlebnis zu bieten.”

Die Roadmap des Unternehmens umreißt kühne Strategien, die darauf ausgerichtet sind, das Wachstum voranzutreiben und Innovationen in der Branche voranzutreiben. Dazu gehört eine Erweiterung der Produktpalette, um ein breiteres Spektrum an Kundenbedürfnissen abzudecken, und das Ziel, bestehenden Kunden durch Stärkung des Angebots und der Kundenbetreuung kontinuierlich einen außergewöhnlichen Mehrwert zu bieten.

Significo ist bestrebt, ein Team von Technologen aufzubauen, die daran glauben, dass ihr Handwerk den Menschen in den Mittelpunkt des Gesundheitswesens rücken wird; das Unternehmen erweitert seine Bank mit hochqualifizierten Mitarbeitern, um seine operative Bandbreite zu stärken. Dies wird Significo in eine starke Position für nachhaltiges Wachstum und Erfolg in der Zukunft bringen.

Informationen zu Significo:
Significo stellt sich eine Welt vor, in der die Gesundheitstechnologie einen Wandel im Leben der Menschen herbeiführt und die Branche revolutioniert, indem sie das menschliche Erlebnis in den Vordergrund stellt. Als internationales Unternehmen mit Niederlassungen in Austin, TX (USA), Berlin, Deutschland und Spanien entwickelt Significo digitale Produkte und Technologien, die auf elegante Weise komplexe gesundheitliche Herausforderungen lösen und nachhaltige Auswirkungen auf das Wohlbefinden des Einzelnen haben. Mit seinem unerschütterlichen Engagement für die Entwicklung sinnvoller Lösungen gestaltet Significo die digitale Gesundheitslandschaft neu und inspiriert positive Veränderungen im Leben seiner Nutzer. Bei Significo kommen Gesundheit und Menschlichkeit zusammen.

Weitere Informationen finden Sie auf www.significo.com.

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2169399/Significo_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Significo

Charting the course of the Digital Health Evolution

AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 4, 2023 — Significo Health, previously known as Vilua Healthcare GmbH, announced a pivotal rebranding today.

The company’s rebrand follows the strategic majority investment by entrepreneurs Rick McCartney and Chris Koha and a successful $12 million Series A funding round. With two decades of expertise delivering secure software services to top healthcare organizations in Germany, Significo is poised to make a significant impact on the global health tech landscape.

“Announcing this strategic rebranding is an exciting time for us,” says Rick McCartney, CEO. “Not only are we better equipped to serve our existing clients under the Significo banner, our strengthened team allows us to provide a highly customized and impactful digital health experiences to users around the world.”

The company’s roadmap outlines audacious strategies designed to drive growth and pioneer innovation in the industry. This includes an expansion of the product range to cater to a broader array of customer needs and an aim to continually deliver exceptional value to existing clients by strengthening offerings and customer support.

Demonstrating Significo’s dedication to building a team of technologists who believe that their craft will bring humans to the center of healthcare; the company is enhancing its bench with high-quality hires to fortify their operational bandwidth. This will put them in a strong position for sustained growth and success in the future.

About Significo:
Significo envisions a world where health technology catalyzes transformative change in people’s lives and revolutionizes the industry by prioritizing the human experience. As an international company with hubs in Austin, TX, Berlin, Germany, and Spain, Significo creates digital products and technologies that elegantly solve complex health challenges, leaving a lasting impact on individuals’ well-being. With its steadfast dedication to creating meaningful solutions, Significo is reshaping the digital health landscape and inspiring positive transformations in the lives of its users. With Significo, health meets humanity.

For more information, please visit www.significo.com.

SOURCE Significo

Trazando el curso de la evolución de la salud digital

AUSTIN, Texas, 4 de agosto de 2023 — Significo Health, anteriormente conocida como Vilua Healthcare GmbH, anunció hoy un cambio de marca fundamental.

El cambio de marca de la compañía sigue a la inversión estratégica mayoritaria de los empresarios Rick McCartney y Chris Koha y una exitosa ronda de financiación Serie A de 12 millones de dólares. Con dos décadas de experiencia ofreciendo servicios de software seguros a las principales organizaciones de atención médica en Alemania, Significo está preparada para generar un impacto significativo en el panorama mundial de la tecnología de la salud.

“Anunciar este cambio de marca estratégico es un momento emocionante para nosotros”, dijo Rick McCartney, consejero delegado. “No solo estamos mejor equipados para servir a nuestros clientes existentes bajo el estandarte de Significo, nuestro equipo fortalecido nos permite brindar experiencias de salud digital altamente personalizadas e impactantes a usuarios de todo el mundo”.

La hoja de ruta de la compañía describe estrategias audaces diseñadas para impulsar el crecimiento y la innovación pionera en la industria. Esto incluye una expansión de la gama de productos para satisfacer una gama más amplia de necesidades de los clientes y el objetivo de ofrecer continuamente un valor excepcional a los clientes existentes mediante el fortalecimiento de las ofertas y la atención al cliente.

Demostrando la dedicación de Significo para construir un equipo de tecnólogos que creen que su oficio llevará a los humanos al centro de la atención médica; la empresa está mejorando su banca con contrataciones de alta calidad para fortalecer su ancho de banda operativo. Esto los colocará en una posición sólida para el crecimiento sostenido y el éxito en el futuro.

Acerca de Significo:

Significo imagina un mundo donde la tecnología de la salud cataliza un cambio transformador en la vida de las personas y revoluciona la industria al priorizar la experiencia humana. Como empresa internacional con sedes en Austin, TX, Berlín, Alemania y España, Significo crea productos y tecnologías digitales que resuelven con elegancia desafíos de salud complejos, dejando un impacto duradero en el bienestar de las personas. Con su firme dedicación a la creación de soluciones significativas, Significo está remodelando el panorama de la salud digital e inspirando transformaciones positivas en la vida de sus usuarios. Con Significo, la salud se encuentra con la humanidad.

Para más información, visite www.significo.com.

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2169399/Significo_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Significo

NEW YORK, Aug. 3, 2023 — Knot, the platform that enables card issuers to automatically switch saved payment methods at the request of their users, announced today a $10 million Series A raise led by Nava Ventures, with participation from Amex Ventures, Plaid, and 20+ world-leading CEOs and founders. The funding will be used to scale Knot’s services and accelerate the expansion of its merchant support.

“Securing this Series A funding signifies the immense trust our investors have in Knot’s potential to revolutionize the way card issuers manage their customers’ payment methods,” said Rory O’Reilly, CEO of Knot. “We’re grateful for the chance to further our mission of building a financially interconnected future, and we’re excited about the new opportunities this funding opens up for our team and our customers.”

Since launching, Knot has been a go-to solution for card issuers looking to increase user spend and reduce churn. Knot’s API offers card issuers the ability to instantly update card-on-file information at almost any merchant with just a few lines of code, meaning an easier onboarding experience for consumers, and more revenue and retention for the bank.

“We see the potential of Knot’s technology to improve the customer experience in updating card credentials on file, while also enabling uninterrupted payments for merchants,” said Matt Sueoka, SVP and Global Head of Amex Ventures. “We’re excited to support Knot as they scale their current operations and build out new products and services.”  

With this funding, Knot plans to expand its merchant support even further, aiming to ultimately encompass virtually all online merchants. Knot will also use this funding to scale additional products such as the Knot Subscription Canceller and Account Creator, to help financial institutions seamlessly integrate into their customer’s digital lives. This commitment to broad support reflects Knot’s dedication to improving payment processes for businesses and consumers alike, and to maintaining a customer-first approach in all its operations.

About Knot:

Knot is a leading fintech company specializing in card-on-file management. It offers a secure, user-friendly solution for businesses to automatically switch saved payment methods at the request of their users. With Knot, card issuers can update card-on-file information instantly and seamlessly, enhancing the customer experience and driving increased interchange revenue from day one.

SOURCE Knot

Funding led by Initialized Capital to advance Datasaur’s NLP data labeling and model-building process efficiency for data scientists

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3, 2023 — Datasaur, a leading natural language processing (NLP) platform that helps annotators train AI algorithms, today announced the close of a $4 million seed funding round and launched a new feature, Datasaur Dinamic, allowing users to easily train custom NLP models. The round was led by Initialized Capital with participation from HNVR, Gold House Ventures, and TenOneTen, bringing Datasaur’s total funding to date to $7.9 million. The latest investment will be used to democratize access to the latest advancements in NLP and LLM technology.

As NLP model training processes and platform capabilities have advanced and converged, it is increasingly proprietary datasets that power the unique capabilities of the resulting models. Datasaur has invested the last four years in building an intuitive and efficient platform that enables companies to label their own data which transforms raw data into valuable AI datasets.

With Datasaur’s new product Dinamic, users can take this labeled data one step further with a click of a single button to train a custom NLP model. As more data is labeled, the model automatically learns and becomes more accurate and powerful. With this streamlined process, teams can quickly build and iterate on models. Dinamic turns a complex, multi-step process spanning multiple platforms and technologies into a simple two-step process. Companies can now annotate the data based on business requirements and automatically receive a fully trained NLP model, saving millions of dollars in data science costs along the way.

“I’ve long observed that the primary differentiating factor between NLP models is the underlying training data,” said Ivan Lee, CEO and founder of Datasaur. “We initially founded Datasaur with a focus on the labeling platform because that was the most painful, complex, and time consuming step in the NLP development cycle. We’ve built a configurable and comprehensive interface for labeling the petabytes of raw text and audio data companies have accumulated. Today we are in a perfect storm between the dizzying advancements in LLM technology alongside renewed vigor from business stakeholders in translating AI into cost savings and accelerated revenue generation. At this key inflection point, we’re excited to accelerate our product development and help our customers tap into the full potential of NLP.”

With OpenAI’s president Greg Brockman as an early investor, Datasaur has helped support companies such as Spotify, Google, and Qualtrics label a vast array of text data ranging from Word documents to PDFs to audio clips. The platform employs state of the art techniques such as weak supervision and LLM-labeling to save customers up to 80% of their time and costs. Datasaur’s workforce management platform and Conflict Review mode also support teams in scaling their efforts and utilizing best practices to identify errors in their training dataset.

“The NLP space is clearly primed for growth,” said Brett Gibson, Managing Partner at Initialized Capital. “We’re seeing companies in every industry and vertical rushing to discover how to apply ChatGPT-like technology to their own processes. Over the last few years, we’ve been impressed by the Datasaur team’s ability to take complex technical workflows and condense them into an intuitive experience for data scientists and non-technical annotators alike. The current LLM space is highly fragmented and evolving rapidly. Products like Datasaur Dinamic simplify and standardize the process for those new to the NLP space. We saw the potential in the NLP space in 2020 when we first invested in this team, and the time is ripe to capture the rapidly growing market.”

Datasaur has built the NLP industry’s most efficient data labeling tool and will leverage that foundation to expand into a full-fledged, all-in-one NLP platform. The company’s mission has been to increase accessibility to NLP technologies and support NLP development in international languages for a global audience. Datasaur Dinamic now allows non-technical teams to build and develop their own proprietary NLP solutions.

To learn more about Datasaur, please visit https://datasaur.ai/.

About Datasaur
Datasaur leads the NLP industry with its comprehensive and automated data labeling solution. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, the company helps financial, legal, and healthcare companies turn raw unstructured data into valuable ML datasets. Prior to Datasaur, CEO Ivan Lee sold his first company Loki Studios to Yahoo and led ML teams at Yahoo and Apple. Datasaur graduated from the Stanford StartX (F19) and YCombinator (W20) accelerators and are backed by Initialized Capital, Greg Brockman (OpenAI President) and Calvin French-Owen (Segment CTO). To stay up to date with the latest developments from Datasaur, follow https://www.linkedin.com/company/datasaur.

SOURCE Datasaur

PRIMARY INVESTMENT THESIS ON SCALING EARLY-STAGE WEB3 AND METAVERSE TECHNOLOGY VENTURES

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 3, 2023 — Futureverse Co-Founders, Shara Senderoff and Aaron McDonald, announce today the launch of Born Ready, a new $50 million venture fund and studio. The fund’s primary focus is to accelerate the development and adoption of emerging technology ventures that hold strategic collaboration potential with Futureverse or The Root Network, a public decentralized blockchain network optimized for metaverse apps and experiences.

“We’re incredibly excited to officially announce our Born Ready venture fund, as we seek out visionary developers and forward-thinking leaders building the future of the internet,” said Shara Senderoff and Aaron McDonald, co-founders of Born Ready.

Born Ready has already made investments in a variety of companies, including former head of Adidas’ Yeezy Innovation Lab’s high-tech sneaker startup, FCTRY Lab, Power’d Digital, Polemos, Walker Labs and more.

Experienced and respected multi-hyphen venture capitalist-operator-entrepreneurs Senderoff and McDonald co-founded Futureverse together, along with Daniel Gillespie and Marco Brondani who also join Born Ready as partners. Futureverse is a leading AI and metaverse technology and content company that recently announced a $54 million Series A funding round led by 10T Holdings, including contribution from Ripple Labs. By rolling up 11 metaverse infrastructure and content companies into one collaborative ecosystem, Futureverse delivers the essential components for constructing any metaverse application, while maintaining one of the world’s largest digital collectible communities. In the last year, Futureverse has formed global strategic partnerships with renowned organizations and innovators including Wimbledon, FIFA, Authentic Brands Group (ABG), Mastercard, Death Row Records, Wētā Workshop, Snoop Dogg, Timbaland, Keanu Reeves and Alexandra Grant. Futureverse recently announced a strategic partnership with blue-chip NFT collection Cool Cats, integrating the iconic Cool Cats brand with Futureverse’s cutting-edge technology while Senderoff and McDonald became members of the Cool Cats’ Board of Directors.

Senderoff and McDonald have been investing in the web3 and blockchain space for over six years. Shara previously co-founded Raised in Space, a blockchain focused investment fund, in partnership with music-mogul Scooter Braun and blockchain leader Ripple. Through Raised In Space, Shara led investments in over 20 early-stage blockchain startups including a seed investment in Altered State Machine, a decentralized AI protocol that was an integral component of the Futureverse roll-up.

Known for her visionary strategy and foresight both technically and creatively, Shara has commanded attention and praise across the entertainment industry throughout her career in film & TV, digital media and technology. She has been named one of Forbes’ “30 under 30,” Rolling Stone’s “Future 25,” Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and a member of Billboard’s “40 Under 40” and esteemed “Women In Music.” Shara sits on the board of the leading data activation, curation and identity platform, Audigent.

Meanwhile, Aaron was the Co-Founder and Managing Director of NetX Fund, which invested in over 60 portfolio companies with a thesis that the next generation of successful companies will be built on fundamentally different technology. Aaron was also a cofounder, board member, and director of Centrality, one of NZ’s fastest growing technology companies that recently folded into Futureverse. Prior to Centrality, his career includes 20 years in technology as an engineer, product developer, and business leader with portfolios worth over $1b. Aaron was named Ernst & Young EY Technology Entrepreneur of the Year and is an active board member of Power Finance and Med Recruit.

Born Ready will soon announce accelerator programs with funding opportunities. For more information visit: bornready.ventures.

PRESS CONTACT:
Cory Councill (The Untold)
[email protected].com

Chelsey Northern
[email protected] 

download hi-res images here

SOURCE Futureverse

Funding, led by NEA with the support of other premier investors including Hank Greenberg’s C.V. Starr Insurance, will accelerate product development and marketing initiatives that focus on streamlining back-office functions for companies in the insurance industry

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3, 2023 — Functional Finance, a software platform that integrates and automates data and reporting functions for insurance companies, announced today that it has secured $8 million in seed capital, plus $2 million in SAFE notes for future equity investments, which will go towards product development and client relationships. The fundraising round was led by venture capital and growth equity firms New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), Walkabout Ventures and Altai Ventures, with participation from industry titan Hank Greenberg’s C.V. Starr Insurance and other premier investors.

Rashmi “Rush” Melgiri – a two-time insurtech entrepreneur – and seasoned technology executive Tony DeGangi co-founded Functional Finance in 2021. Their mission is to resolve the convoluted operational processes found throughout the insurance sector following years of experience dealing with insurance technology issues firsthand. CEO Melgiri previously co-founded CoverWallet and is joined by CoverWallet’s former president Jim Ermilio, who now serves as Functional Finance’s President. DeGangi, Functional Finance’s CTO, was previously the co-founder and CTO at Renew.com, an online Medicare brokerage platform.

Functional Finance’s technology easily integrates within the finance tech stack of corporate partners to offer billing/invoicing, premium collection, financing, reconciliation, payables processing, reporting and integration back to the general ledger. The platform provides an automated, seamless connection that offers total visibility at a policy or account level.  

“At my last startup I realized firsthand that spreadsheets and emails are terribly inefficient, error-prone and costly ways for the insurance industry to manage their payables and receivables,” said Melgiri, CEO of Functional Finance. “You can build fast-growing businesses and take payments online but reconciling that on the back end is often overlooked and deprioritized, leaving it to intensive manual labor. There was a tremendous opportunity to create an automated technology solution that will make the industry move faster, and the experience should be more efficient and positive for clients and customers.”

As one of the only software solutions exclusively serving the insurance industry, Functional Finance has focused on building its flagship product and working with clients on integrating this seamless, multi-tenant, multi-solution platform. Unlike other software companies that offer efficiencies for a single aspect of financial management, such as payment processing, premium financing or data collection, Functional Finance provides the opportunity for reinsurers, carriers, MGAs, wholesalers and brokers to see the same thing in one place in real-time.

For those industry players who want to avoid back-office issues from the start, integrating the Functional Finance platform is quick and easy:

• Dan Abrahamsen, CEO of Cover Whale, a leading commercial trucking insurance provider: “We are excited to announce our partnership with Functional Finance to provide a new and improved invoicing and payment experience for our customers. Cover Whale has grown to a $300+ million gross written premium run rate quickly and Functional Finance will allow us to continue that trajectory while keeping our internal expense ratios best in class and making things easier and faster for our producer network.”
• Blair Baldwin, Founder and CEO of Boundless Rider, a new MGA in the motorcycle insurance market: “It gives me peace of mind offering our customers and agents an easy checkout experience using the Functional Finance platform. Equally important, working with Functional Finance lets us focus our time and resources on initiatives that drive top-line growth versus the nuts and bolts of billing, invoicing, payables, reconciliation, etc.”

The flexibility of Functional Finance’s platform is built to handle the many operational models in the insurance industry, and the group of seed investors is some of the biggest names in the software and fintech industries.

“The Functional Finance team has created a breakthrough technology that we believe will drive positive experiences and outcomes for the insurance industry, which has historically lagged in adoption of new technologies,” said Rick Yang, Partner, Head of Technology Investing, NEA. “Rashmi, Tony and the Functional Finance team bring valuable experience and a deep understanding of industry-specific opportunities, and we are thrilled to partner with them to modernize insurance data and reporting.”

About Functional Finance
Functional Finance provides financial operations software serving tech-forward insurance companies. The platform is an API-driven embedded solution to help operators automate and own all aspects of money flow from checkout and financing through payables and refunds. With a founding team including the co-founder of CoverWallet, Rashmi Melgiri, the company was founded to provide solutions specifically developed for operators of businesses in the insurance industry through an integrated insurance-specific platform. Functional Finance is SOC 2 Type II certified. To learn more, visit: https://www.functionalfi.com/.

Functional Finance Contact:
Jim Ermilio
[email protected] 

About NEA
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. Founded in 1977, NEA has over $25 billion in assets under management, as of March 31, 2023, and invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s long track record of investing includes more than 270 portfolio company IPOs and more than 450 mergers and acquisitions. For more information, please visit www.nea.com.

SOURCE NEA

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., Aug. 3, 2023 — Newlight Technologies, Inc., a leader in decarbonization technology using natural microorganisms to convert greenhouse gas into high-performance AirCarbon®-based materials, today announced the completion of an equity investment round led by GenZero totaling US$125 million. 

The funding round includes participation by GenZero, a Temasek-owned decarbonization-focused investment platform company, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV), a subsidiary of Occidental (Oxy) focused on advancing low-carbon technologies and business solutions, Charter Next Generation (CNG), North America’s leading producer of specialty films, and a global luxury goods manufacturer, as well as other new and existing shareholders. 

In addition to financial participation, Newlight has completed development agreements with CNG to commercialize specialty films decarbonized with AirCarbon and with OLCV to use direct air capture (DAC) systems to develop carbon dioxide feedstock for AirCarbon production plants. 

Newlight is currently delivering AirCarbon-based products and materials to over 5,000 locations across the world, including to customers and partners in the fashion, entertainment, foodservice, hotel, and automotive industries. This investment will enable Newlight to expand its AirCarbon manufacturing platform towards the company’s goal of using greenhouse gas as a resource to manufacture decarbonized materials at global scale.

“This capital round represents an inflection point for Newlight, where we have the opportunity to build on 20 years of research, development, and commercialization, and expand biological decarbonization at large scale,” said Mark Herrema, CEO of Newlight. “It is an important milestone for Newlight, and we are tremendously excited about the path ahead.”

Newlight uses microorganisms found in California that eat greenhouse gas as their food source to grow a molecule inside of their cells, like muscle, called PHB (polyhydroxybutyrate). PHB is a molecule found in most life on Earth and is used by living organisms as a biological energy and carbon storage vehicle. When purified, PHB becomes meltable and moldable, able to deliver broad-based functionality within the materials market. By weight, AirCarbon is approximately 40% oxygen derived from air and 60% carbon derived from greenhouse gas. 

Frederick Teo, CEO of GenZero, said, “Newlight’s work is transformational in leveraging the power of both technology and nature to produce biomaterials. By using captured greenhouse gases such as methane to produce a high-quality material (AirCarbon) and replace fossil-based plastics, we can achieve significant reductions in carbon emissions. We are excited to support Newlight in their next phase of growth as they expand their commercial production to meet the increasing demand for zero-carbon materials and deliver decarbonization impact at scale.”

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures is leveraging its parent company’s carbon management expertise to deliver solutions that reduce emissions to help Oxy and others achieve net zero. OLCV is making investments in technology, projects and development platforms across the carbon capture value chain. It is currently leading the construction of Stratos, the world’s largest Direct Air Capture plant in Texas, and building sequestration hubs throughout the U.S. Gulf coast region to provide large-scale and rapid carbon removal solutions to help the climate.

“We are excited to work with innovative companies like Newlight who share our vision in decarbonizing a multitude of industries that can help accelerate the path to net zero,” said Derek Willis, Vice President, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures. “Direct Air Capture provides a unique opportunity to supply CO2 as a raw material to create low carbon products. We look forward to supporting Newlight as they work to unlock new value from CO2 while addressing climate change.”

Today, AirCarbon is being used to develop and manufacture products across a range of industries, with a goal of turning everyday products into a consumer-driven force for carbon reduction. The capital investment in this round will enable Newlight to significantly expand the production of AirCarbon at both its existing California facility as well as a new AirCarbon production facility being built in Ohio. 

“Our vision is a world where greenhouse gas is used the way nature uses it–as a resource–and by turning it into high-performance consumer products, we can provide companies with a measurable and scalable path to help them decarbonize their products and move closer to a net-zero world,” said Herrema.

About Newlight

Newlight uses greenhouse gas to make a high-performance material called AirCarbon®. AirCarbon is a biomaterial produced by natural microorganisms that is being used to decarbonize industrial segments ranging from foodware to fashion. Newlight’s mission is to help end climate change by using greenhouse gas as a resource. For more information about Newlight, please visit www.newlight.com. For media inquiries, please email: [email protected]

About GenZero

GenZero is an investment platform company focused on accelerating decarbonization globally. Founded by Temasek, it seeks to deliver positive climate impact alongside long-term sustainable financial returns by investing in opportunities with the potential to be nurtured into impactful and scalable solutions.

Driven by a common purpose to decarbonize for future generations, GenZero recognizes the need for a holistic and integrated approach to achieve a net zero world. It adopts a flexible investment approach across three focus areas to drive climate impact: (i) nature-based solutions that help protect and restore our natural ecosystems while benefiting local communities and biodiversity; (ii) technology-based solutions that deliver deep decarbonization impact; and (iii) carbon ecosystem enablers which refer to companies and solutions that support the development of an effective, efficient, and credible carbon ecosystem. For more information on GenZero, visit www.genzero.co. 

About OCLV

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, LLC (OLCV) is a subsidiary of Occidental (Oxy), an international energy company with assets primarily in the United States, the Middle East and North Africa. OLCV is focused on advancing cutting-edge, low-carbon technologies and business solutions that enhance Oxy’s business while reducing emissions. OLCV also invests in the development of low-carbon fuels and products, as well as sequestration services to support carbon capture projects globally. Visit Carbon Innovation on www.oxy.com for more information.

About Charter Next Generation

Known for its sustainability-first mindset and innovative products, Charter Next Generation (CNG) is North America’s leading independent producer of high-performance, specialty films. Through investments in technology and research, CNG harnesses the power of material science to develop breakthrough innovations for today’s – and tomorrow’s – market. From limitless extrusion capabilities to state-of-the-art clean rooms, CNG provides sustainable solutions that meet rigorous quality, performance, and protection standards. For more information, visit Charter Next Generation at: www.cnginc.com.

SOURCE Newlight Technologies