Octavia Carbon, a Kenyan-based cleantech startup, has raised a 5 million seed round. The company will use the funds to build its Direct Air Capture DAC storage plant.
Direct air capture technology removes carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere by drawing air into a machine, filtering out the carbon dioxide, and storing it safely underground. Excess CO2 in the atmosphere depletes the earths ozone layer, increasing ultraviolet UV radiation that can cause skin cancer, cataracts, and plant damage.
Launched in 2022 by Martin Freimller and Duncan Kariuki, Octovia Carbon designs, builds, and uses machines to capture CO2 from the atmosphere. Those machines take carbon dioxide and store it underground, keeping it out of the atmosphere.
In Kenya, this CO2 is liquefied and injected into the porous basalt of the Rift Valley, where it gradually mineralizes into solid rock.
Freimller and Kariuki built their first carbon capture machine on a kitchen table and plan to open the first phase of Octavias plant this year with the new funding.
