There is a suite of climate actions that we are faced with in order to reach our decarbonization goals. Most of the attention has been paid to producing cleaner forms of energy that do not have carbon footprints like solar, electric, and wind to reduce emissions. However, innovation is also happening in carbon removal, which is essentially removing the carbon dioxide, both historic and newly created from the atmosphere. Air Company has built a proprietary technology that takes captured carbon dioxide and converts it into alcohol. Most alcohols consist of ethanol and water and ethanol is composed of two carbon atoms, six hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom. The company then takes the alcohol generated from its carbon capture process and makes consumer products. Air Company has produced three products to date – an impurity-free, carbon-negative vodka, a hand sanitizer in response to the pandemic, and its latest product – perfumes. Founded by a former alcohol industry executive and a Ph.D. that pioneered converting CO2 to alcohol, Air plans to expand the range of its offering and applications into new areas where sustainability solutions can net a profound impact on industry and humanity. The company currently operates two facilities with plans to open a third state-of-the-art factory giving them additional capacity; Air estimates that when they are fully scaled and integrated into new verticals they’ll have the infrastructure to avoid the equivalent of 10.8% of global CO2 emissions or 4.6B tonnes.
AlleyWatch caught up with Air Company CEO and Cofounder Gregory Constantine to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $30M in a Series A funding round led by Carbon Direct Capital Management with participation from the likes of Toyota Ventures, JetBlue Technology Ventures, AV Fuel, and Parley for the Oceans. This round brings the company’s total funding north of $40M.
Tell us about the product or service that Air Company offers.
Air Company is a climate innovation and technology company, and our mission is to slow the momentum of climate change. We’ve invented a Carbon Conversion technology that converts captured carbon dioxide (CO2) into impurity-free and carbon-negative alcohols. We then use those alcohols to make consumer products. This system is patented and proprietary and is the foundation for all products in our current and future pipeline.
The first product we ever brought to market in 2019 was Air Vodka, and our Air Spray Hand Sanitizer was quick to follow that same year amidst the height of the global pandemic. Our third and most recent product, Air Eau de Parfum, launched for pre-sale at the end of last year. We’re proud to say that all three products made from CO2 are the first of their kind and that we’ve seen high demand for them. We’ve innovated tremendously across the consumer goods space and are working towards commercial expansion into other industries, including aerospace.
What inspired the start of Air Company?
Following an early career at one of the world’s largest alcohol companies, I met my now partner and cofounder, Dr. Stafford Sheehan, on a Forbes alumni trip overseas. It wasn’t long before we found a lot of synergies and realized that my prior experience in business and brand innovation in the alcohol industry and his discovery to convert CO2 into alcohols were a great combination in order to try to help change the world.
How is Air Company different?
Everything we do within our business focuses on doing good for our planet and tackling the climate crisis head-on. There are a lot of decisions we make in our processes that demonstrate our unyielding commitment to sustainability and our competitive advantage. Aside from the primary function of our technology, converting CO2 into alcohols, our system uniquely utilizes 100% of its CO2 supply, meaning none of it is re-emitted into the atmosphere, and our entire process runs on renewable (solar and wind) energy. Additionally, our technology is source-agnostic, meaning it can use any supply of CO2. Similar projects can only utilize CO2 from steel mill flue gas, which severely limits the technology’s deployment potential. The result of our process is carbon-negative alcohol such as ethanol that have been tested and proven to be unparalleled in quality. We’re dedicated to continuing to innovate our processes through ongoing R&D efforts and offering high-quality, sustainable alternatives to our consumers.
What’s your business model?
Air Company operates on a B2C and B2B business model, by selling consumer products directly to our customers as well as providing technology and sustainable solutions to large enterprise businesses to help them reach out CO2 mitigation goals.
What are your post-COVID office plans?
As a progressive company, we’re adapting to move with the trends set forth by the pandemic. This round of funding will help us to continue to hire a diverse team to actualize our goals and continue to scale and develop our technology through diversification of R&D.
What was the funding process like?
The funding process is always a challenging yet rewarding process. We’re extremely fortunate to have a great investor base that believes in our vision and sees the progress our organization is making, which inherently makes the process a smoother one.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
One challenge we face is that because our operations include a broad range of products, including vodka, some corporates and specific funders have intricacies in their investment thesis’ that prevent them from investing in companies that produce products such as spirits. Separately, when you’re working on such new and innovative technology and products, the learning curve and education for funders can also be an opportunity to work through.
One challenge we face is that because our operations include a broad range of products, including vodka, some corporates and specific funders have intricacies in their investment thesis’ that prevent them from investing in companies that produce products such as spirits. Separately, when you’re working on such new and innovative technology and products, the learning curve and education for funders can also be an opportunity to work through.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Ultimately, we have a universal technology that can be used across a number of products and verticals. As a result, we have the ability to have the highest impact, setting us apart from our competitors. The uniqueness of our business model is also a driver for investors. We have the ability to reduce our production costs to meet traditional pricing, which means we can ultimately take the market share of legacy production methods, in an industry where demand is far larger than supply. Our business model focuses on starting with high-value, low-volume products to eventually pave the way for a transition to high-value, high-volume products at a lower cost—this resonates with investors as it makes the most sense economically and is how you build a true commercial business.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
The next six months will be focused primarily on scaling our capacity, both technologically and geographically, while also continuing to educate our consumers on climate change and carbon technologies through real commercial products. Consistently delivering the absolute highest quality product for our consumers is the most critical aspect of our business, and we will make sure never to fall short of that.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Be creative and persistent!
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our mission is to utilize as much CO2 as possible while preventing additional CO2 from being released into the atmosphere to help address the urgent nature of climate change. While we scale our production to meet consumer demand for our products, we will also focus on commercialization in the near term. These industry-scale applications of our technology will allow us to achieve a broader impact. The potential for our technology to be scaled to replace carbon-intensive legacy production makes us an innovative disruptor, proving that a decarbonized economy is the future. While we work to create a cleaner and equitable future on earth, we are also working on extending humanity with the support of NASA and Draper Laboratory through the creation of glucose and rocket fuel from CO2.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
ATLA.
