Today Kairos is excited to announce the close of our pre-seed funding round! We’re thrilled to be backed by the amazing team at Zero Carbon Capital, and to welcome Sarah Jones to our board. 

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Kairos is tackling some of the biggest issues in the climate space by processing challenging organic wastes and extracting value. Hundreds of megatonnes of organic waste - things like sewage sludge, manure, and municipal waste - end up in places like landfills every year causing a host of environmental problems. Our goal is to clean up the mess, and harness the useful material in that waste to solve some of the most pressing climate issues of our time:

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🌏 Carbon removal: Our technology turns biogenic carbon into durable, measurable, and verifiable carbon removal by converting biomass to CO2 gas, which can be stored underground for thousands of years. Scientists agree that carbon removal is crucial to meeting the Paris climate targets, and our tech has the potential to put billions of tonnes of CO2 safely back underground where it belongs. We’re aiming for a credit price of <$50 per tonne - an ambitious target which we hope will make carbon removal accessible to more buyers than ever.

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♻️ Circular phosphorus: We’ll also recover valuable nutrients like phosphorus, enabling circular reuse in agriculture. Not only does this address the pressing problem of phosphorus scarcity - a growing concern for global food security - it also helps to mitigate nutrient runoff, which can cause eutrophication, toxic algal blooms, and oceanic dead zones. 

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💧Clean water: Lastly, we’ll recover clean water from our waste - a growing imperative as droughts become increasingly common and severe as part of a rapidly changing climate.

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So, how does our tech work? We’re using an advanced hydrothermal processing system to break down waste. This process takes organic matter, subjects it to extreme heat and pressure, and allows for the recovery of valuable resources. It’s efficient, scalable, and most importantly, it's a game-changer for wastes that don’t easily break down in existing disposal pathways. Our process can destroy anything from PFAS to hormone disruptors, preventing these robust pollutants from accumulating in our environment. 

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Along with funding from the Grantham Foundation and Deep Science Ventures, this investment from Zero Carbon will be used to build the world’s first implementation of this technology for carbon removal and value recovery.  

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We’re excited for what this technology can do for the planet, but we know we can’t do it alone. If you’re a buyer of carbon removal, have difficult waste to process, or are interested in nutrient recovery or circular phosphorus—please reach out! We’d love to connect.

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We have plenty of exciting announcements on the horizon, so stay tuned.

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-The Kairos team