Mars Materials Closes $660k in Oversubscribed Pre-Seed Round to Accelerate Commercialization of Utilizing Captured-CO2 as Industrial Feed Stock

OAKLAND, Calif., October 26, 2022 – Mars Materials, Inc. PBC™ (“Mars or the Company”) (https://www.marsmaterials.tech) today announced it successfully closed a pre-seed oversubscribed funding round at $660k. Mars’ mission is to reverse humanity’s industrial waste carbon footprint and its harmful effect on the planet’s climate. 

With the closing of the Company’s pre-seed round, Mars is now focused on commercializing its patented technology to decarbonize carbon-intensive industries by repurposing captured-CO2 and bio-based feedstocks. This funding round will support producing samples of Mars’ product for testing with global acrylamide manufacturers.

“At Mars, we’re working to convert our CO2-emitting industrial supply chain into a carbon sink. In the fast-growing acrylonitrile market, we see great opportunities to achieve our ambitious climate goals and build a profitable enterprise,” said Aaron Fitzgerald, CEO and Co-Founder.

Kristian Gubsch, VP of Feedstock Development and Co-Founder added, “The nitrilation process technology is a win-win-win. It can directly utilize captured-CO2, decrease overall process emissions, and be produced at a lower cost compared to the incumbent process.” 

Mars is proud to announce venture investments from Untapped Capital, Prithvi Ventures, Climate Capital Collective (C3), Overlap Holdings, and BlackTech Capital along with angel investments from Jonathan Azoff, Nate Salpeter, and Brian Andrés Helmick. 

“I’ve been an early and proud supporter of Aaron and Kristian’s climate-saving work and I congratulate them on closing their pre-seed funding round” said Yohei Nakajima, General Partner at Untapped Capital. “Mars is at the forefront of sustainable material innovation and their acrylonitrile solution is an important step in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and creating sustainable industrial feedstock.”

Mars’ is developing downstream industrial feedstock for long-lived products such as acrylamide and carbon fiber using captured-CO2. With low cost, low carbon acrylonitrile, Mars’ technology can unlock carbon fiber’s use in new applications ranging from vehicles to transmission lines to hydrogen storage to building materials. In addition to having huge potential markets, each of these carbon fiber applications have tremendous gigaton-scale decarbonization benefits and can permanently store captured-CO2. 

Recently, Fitzgerald and Gubsch were announced as Breakthrough Energy Fellows and will leverage their collaboration with other BE Fellows to further advance the Company in achieving its commercialization milestones.

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Mars Materials (Mars) is an Oakland, CA-based venture-backed carbon dioxide utilization startup. Mars’ mission is to reverse humanity’s industrial waste carbon footprint. The company aims to sequester a gigaton of captured-CO2 into long-lived products such as cheaper carbon fiber and wastewater treatment chemicals.