At Amplify Capital, we actively support and invest in mission-driven founders and their startups across North America, focusing on healthcare, education, and environmental technologies. Our thesis is grounded in backing companies where purpose drives profit to deliver scalable and outsized financial alongside impact returns.
We believe we can foster impact investing and transform how we think about investing by doing well and doing good.
The Problem
The world’s population is growing – urbanization and the development of cities is rapidly expanding globally. Housing and infrastructure are a strategic priority for the UN SDGs. SDG 11, Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable urbanization, aims to enhance inclusive urbanization. City planning and management must integrate sustainability.
To support urban development requires vast amounts of building supplies. Concrete continues to stand the test of time because of its strength properties, low cost, and relatively easy handling of other materials enabling rapid material adoption in construction.
Every year, 4 billion Tonnes of concrete are produced and account for roughly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions are primarily from chemical and thermal combustion processes involved in its production and international transportation. For every tonne of cement, approximately 0.95 tonnes of CO2 is emitted.
The Solution
There is an urgent need to develop a solution to simplify creating better concrete that can capture significant carbon during the production process. Founded in 2014, Alberta-based Carbon Upcycling Technologies uses an IP-protected process to react waste CO2 with solid feedstock (e.g. graphite, fly ash) to create solid nanoparticles. The resulting nanoparticles can then be added to concrete (and multiple other use cases), providing up to 30% stronger performance and 40% long-term durability than traditional cement and concrete production methods.
Carbon Upcycling Technologies is the first company to reduce cement and concrete’s carbon footprint by double digits while enhancing performance. The Company also develops complementary additives with plastics, coatings, and consumer product applications.
Investment Thesis
“Carbon Upcycling Technology’s vision is to become the world’s most impactful carbon utilization company by making carbon-derived additives that will lower the embodied carbon of everything we interact with, ultimately helping to build a better tomorrow” - Apoorv Sinha, CEO.
Amplify’s first and lasting impression is that Carbon Upcycling’s team is mission-driven and determined to win in providing a scalable solution to heal the planet. Apoorv and his team are highly motivated to bring a technology to market that radically changes how concrete and cement are made and used. The team has surrounded themselves with highly experienced strategic advisors to complement their experience, including to support commercialization.
This clear impact mission plus the large and growing cement market at over US $350B today, coupled with large and urgent pressure in the cement industry to decarbonize products and processes, make Carbon Upcycling an obvious fit for the Amplify portfolio. In addition to massive impact opportunities, Carbon Upcycling’s process is scalable and easier to engineer, procure and construct, all at a substantial cost advantage.
Although Amplify is an early-stage investor, we like to see our investments prove their technology is commercially ready. Usually, we see lab scale capacity or sometimes larger. However, for Carbon Upcycling, we were impressed that it had grown its capacity from lab to commercial scale (400x) through non-dilutive funding, getting them ready for pilot projects. The team has proved to be extremely capital efficient and resourceful to reach impressive commercial-ready milestones.
Impact
Carbon Upcycling delivers a greener, stronger, more durable concrete. Their enhanced supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) prove step-change results, including 20% cement reduction per cubic meter, 40% improvement in strength activity, and 40% improved durability and rebar protection.
There is a direct alignment between Carbon Upcycling’s impact outcomes and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Company’s unique technology has the ability to reduce the concrete and cement industry’s emissions by up to 9% or 340 Megatonnes (Mt) annually, supporting Amplify’s 2030 portfolio goal of 50Mt of CO2 emissions reduction.
This massive impact helps us progress toward SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), targets 9.1 (Develop quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure) and 9.4 (Upgrade infrastructure to make it sustainable); SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), target 11.3 (Enhance sustainable urbanization); and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
Impact Measurement: Amplify Capital will measure Carbon Upcycling’s impact success by (1) its ability to sequester CO2 in feedstock (baseline: up to 25% absorption); (2) Reduced clinker content in concrete (baseline 10-20%); and (3) increasing local sourcing and reducing long-haul transportation of materials.
We’re thrilled to welcome Carbon Upcycling Technologies to Amplify’s growing portfolio! If you’re as excited about Carbon Upcycling’s mission as we are, feel free to follow their journey with us. Remember to subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on Amplify Capital’s exciting companies.
Are you working on something big that can leave a mark on the world? We’d love to hear from you! Visit us at Amplify Capital or reach out at hello@amplifycapital.ca.