Ex-Tesla engineer's Sirona bets Tesla-speed iteration can make direct air capture cheap

Direct air capture machines that push ambient air through a chemical filter, heat it with steam to release the CO2, then compress it for storage or reuse.

$1M pre-seed closed earlier in 2023 from XAnge, David Rowan's VOYAGERS Climate-Tech Fund, Syndicate One, Tesla and SpaceX engineers, Cowboy's Adrien Roose, Eventbrite co-founder Renaud Visage and eFounders' Thibaud Elziere.

Thoralf Gutierrez led development of Tesla's big-data analytics stack for hardware iteration and built that engineering team. In January 2023 he founded Sirona Technologies in Belgium with thermodynamics engineer Gauthier Limpens, hiring specialists in particle physics, carbon capture, chemical and aerospace engineering from CERN, Oxford and UCLouvain.

The team built its first prototype in under two months. Six months in, it was testing gen 3 and reported a 100x efficacy increase over v1. The design pairs solar with heat pumps and thermal storage to power the steam release, and the captured CO2 is compressed for geological storage or conversion into aviation fuel, pharma inputs, battery-recycling processes, carbon-neutral construction materials and carbonated drinks.

It imports a manufacturing-cadence bet from Tesla into a deep-tech field whose incumbents iterate on year-long cycles.

The speed claim is measurable and dated: prototype one in under two months, gen 3 with a stated 100x efficacy gain within six months of founding.

It made Belgium, which had no DAC entrant, one of the few European countries with a direct air capture company.

The capital is real and named — a previously undisclosed $1M pre-seed from XAnge, VOYAGERS and Syndicate One — not a wishlist.

In deep-tech hardware the compounding asset can be iteration cadence: a team that rebuilds every two months learns more, cheaper, than one that ships every two years.

As of 22 November 2023, Sirona was testing gen 3 of its capture unit, ten months after founding, reporting a 100x efficacy increase over the first prototype. The design plan is to ride falling solar costs, pairing panels with heat pumps and thermal storage to generate the steam that releases captured CO2, then compress the gas for geological storage or for making aviation fuels, pharmaceutical inputs, carbon-neutral construction materials and carbonated beverages. The company had disclosed its $1M pre-seed only with the Tech.eu profile.