Climeworks helps the world's top businesses remove CO2 from the air.
The Swiss start-up hopes to play a major role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 40% from 1990 levels. The company, which Bill Gates recently named one of 10 breakthrough technologies, captures carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air before repurposing it. In Switzerland, for instance, one plant sells the CO2 to the soft-drinks industry.
A major green company incubated by EIT Climate-KIC
Climeworks joined EIT Climate-KIC’s Accelerator programme in 2012 and 2013, which provides start-ups with professional resources, knowledge, funding, and networking. It got CHF 42 000 from EIT Climate-KIC to prove its concept and EIT Climate-KIC was "crucial" to prove the value of Climeworks' technology in the early stages.
Through the Accelerator programme, EIT Climate-KIC helped Climeworks assess and validate the climate impacts of its innovation and opened the doors to its community which provided the kind of mentorship and partnership early-stage start-ups like Climateworks need to get started.
If it wasn’t for the EIT, Climeworks may not be where it is today.
Louise Charles, Communications Manager at Climeworks
An atmospheric rise
The company was founded in 2009 by engineers Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, who had the idea for Climeworks when studying at ETH Zurich. There, they developed the early prototypes for the technology, which was eventually able to reach the finals of the Virgin Earth Challenge in 2011.
The company went on to raise millions in equity from private investors, most significantly a 2022 CHF 600 million injection of funding during an equity round that pushed Climeworks over the USD 1 billion valuation threshold needed to become a "unicorn" start-up.
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