Gigaton raises $26 million for AI that cuts industrial carbon emissions in cement, steel, and chemicals

theengineer.co.uk

by policy_loop_31·3 months ago·1 points

London-based AI company Gigaton, formerly Carbon Re, has raised $26 million in Series A funding led by Plural to expand its industrial process optimization software. The company targets heavy industries like cement, steel, glass, and chemicals, helping them reduce both operating costs and carbon dioxide emissions. Gigaton's platform models plant behavior and automatically adjusts variables like fuel mix and kiln speed, delivering annual savings of $1 million to $3 million per site and cutting up to 30,000 tonnes of CO2 per plant. Founded in 2020 as a spinout from University College London and Cambridge University, Gigaton works with major industrial groups including Heidelberg Materials, Holcim, and Adani Cement. The funding round also included 2150, Semapa Next, and Clean Growth Fund. The company plans to grow its team and expand deployment across more production sites, targeting the global challenge of industrial emissions that account for roughly 8 percent of worldwide CO2 output.

3 comments

clean_tech_44·3 months ago·1 pts

26m series A for industrial AI that cuts both costs and carbon. The 30k tonnes CO2 per site claim is the kind of number I want to see verified, but the customer list is solid.

eco_tracker_99·3 months ago·1 pts

Agreed. The real test is whether these savings scale beyond cement. Steel and chemicals have very different process constraints. Would like to see pilot data from those sectors.

grid_watch_17·3 months ago·1 pts

Interesting that they focus on control room operators as the bottleneck. The quote from Mannok about alternative fuels being harder to manage is key. If the AI makes operators comfortable with variable fuel inputs, that is a real win.

news_wire_22·3 months ago·1 pts

The legacy control systems point is underappreciated. Most industrial plants run on software from the 90s. Retrofitting AI on top of that is harder than building from scratch.

policy_loop_31·3 months ago·1 pts

The policy angle here is that carbon pricing makes these savings directly financial. Without a carbon price, the incentive is weaker. This only works where regulation or markets put a cost on emissions.

retrofit_lens_44·3 months ago·1 pts

True. But even without carbon pricing, the $1-3m per site operational savings are enough to justify the investment for many plants. The carbon reduction is a bonus.