Carbominer secured €1.5M grant from EIC Accelerator

KYIV, Ukraine (February 2024): Last week Carbominer signed the Grant Agreement with the EIC Accelerator Fund. With this formal action, Carbominer secured a €1.5 Million grant and is eligible for up to €7.5 Million in equity at the later stages of the project.

EIC Accelerator is one of the biggest funding opportunities in Europe supporting innovative startups and high-risk small and medium-sized businesses that might contribute to rapid economic growth and sustainability transition. Each year around 3000 startups and SMEs apply for funding from the EIC Accelerator, and the average success rate from the first short submission to awarding is around 7%.

The same applies to the last announced batch awarded in October 2023 – the overall success rate was 7.25%. In this batch the European Commission announced the official results of the EIC Accelerator, awarding 47 innovative companies and SMEs from 15 countries with €349 Million.

One of the awardees was Carbominer, a climate tech startup founded in 2020 by a Ukrainian innovator with an engineering and corporate background Nick Oseyko.

The whole grant application process took 8 months and included short application preparation, long application, review time by the Commission and the final interview in October with seven experts from a different background – from engineering to venture capital.

The technology developed by Carbominer allows to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (Direct Air Capture) and is shaped in two modular units – for CO2 capture and regeneration.

The team firmly believes that CO₂ is a valuable feedstock rather than a dangerous waste and can bring good use for various types of customers around the globe. And, as a DAC technology provider, Carbominer can serve any industry that needs fossil-free or high-purity CO₂.

The first focus area where the team aims to make an impact is Indoor Agriculture. The vision driving the team is to enable more sustainable and efficient food production by supplying green atmospheric CO2 to indoor farmers.

The startup launched a small R&D lab in March 2020, and scaled to a full-blown R&D facility in October of the same year, after raising the seed investment from Ukrainian fund SMRK VC. In September 2021 the first MVP machine was built. And despite the difficulties caused by the Russian full-scale invasion in Ukraine, Carbominer managed to put the improved 1-tonne DAC machine prototype on the paid pilot with a corporate partner in 2022.

The whole project funded by EIC Commission is dedicated to bringing DAC technology to commercialisation. This includes technology advancement to 50 and 250 tons per year DAC machines, pre-commercialisation activities with European vertical farms and smart greenhouses and establishing a DAC-unit production line within the next 4 years.

During the submission preparation, Carbominer actively engaged with UpSpark, one of the leading consulting firms in Central and Eastern Europe with headquarters in Krakow, Poland. The services they provide is helping deep tech and engineering startups tell their stories to win the hearts and minds of the jury. 

Ukraine is steadily gaining momentum to showcase its full innovation potential on the international scene. Across all the types of EIC funding programs, already 20 Ukrainian innovative projects received financing over the last decade.

Carbominer is the second Ukrainian startup to receive financing under the new EIC Accelerator program, operational since 2021. In 2022 same type of financing was received by another Kyiv-based project Releaf Paper. 

Carbominer was funded by Ukrainian fund SMRK VC and in 2023 secured additional funding from Swiss Business Angel, reaching a mark of exactly $1 Million raised in equity investment. Now the team is negotiating the late seed raise to complement the EIC Accelerator funding and aims to close the round during spring.

ABOUT CARBOMINER

Carbominer is a modular Direct Air Capture technology provider from Ukraine. The main product offering is the sustainable CO₂ captured from the open air. With this fossil-free CO₂, farmers can sustainably promote crop yield by 30% in their greenhouse or vertical farm. 

For more details visit our page on LinkedIn. 

ABOUT EIC ACCELERATOR

The EIC Accelerator offers start-ups and SMEs grants of up to €2.5 million combined with equity investments through the EIC Fund up to €15 million. In addition to financial support, all projects benefit from a range of Business Acceleration Services that provide access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors.

Since its launch in 2021, EIC Accelerator has seen a high level of demand by startups and SMEs, receiving in total more than 10,000 applications and investing in around 500 projects. 

For more details visit
https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-funding-opportunities/eic-accelerator_en