NEW YORK — October 22, 2024 — Turnover Labs, an early-stage, New York City-based start-up that aims to decarbonize the chemical manufacturing industry and change the way the world produces petrochemicals announced that it has closed a $1.4 Million Pre-Seed funding round.  Pace Ventures and GC Ventures are co-leads along with Sandy Spring Climate Partners and a select handful of other leading VC firms.

Turnover Labs leverages proprietary technology pioneered and developed at Columbia University to convert “dirty” CO2 produced in chemical manufacturing -- and released into the atmosphere -- into valuable chemical building blocks.  Founded in 2022, Turnover’s innovative electrolysis technology will allow chemical companies to produce their products without relying on petroleum feedstocks.  Research indicates that chemical manufacturing accounts for more than 2 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year; and a majority of these emissions have no current technical solutions for reduction, avoidance, or capture. 

According to Marissa Beatty, Ph.D., Turnover’s founder and CEO, the company will use the funds to expand its engineering team, grow business development efforts, and accelerate R&D to transition its technology from the lab to a sub-scale prototype. These critical growth steps will lead to building a real-world prototype that could “recycle” thousands of tons of CO2 annually.

“Using Turnover’s technology, chemical manufacturers will be able to synthesize the most basic chemical building blocks out of the CO2 being emitted by their own facilities,” Beatty said. “Our design emphasizes durability and process compatibility with existing infrastructure, and we’re building our systems to be highly resilient, inexpensive, and able to scale into many different processes.”

Beatty emphasized that Turnover’s approach uses existing infrastructure to make conversion highly cost-effective. “Instead of building a new process to be compatible with our conversion system, we’re building a system that can easily fit into the operations of virtually any chemical manufacturing plant,” she said. “Our hope is that our approach will help speed the transition to a petroleum-free future because we can make use of chemical manufacturing assets that are already in place and operating. These assets still have years of life left before they’re replaced with more efficient alternatives, so we’re excited to offer chemical producers a way to reduce emissions and costs today.”

“Pace Ventures is thrilled to be part of this funding round and support Turnover Labs. Their innovative approach to low cost, highly durable electrolyzers coupled with the exceptional abilities of their team make them a standout in the market. The timing is perfect as Turnover Labs is poised to disrupt point source carbon capture efforts, and finally provide chemical producers with a truly turnkey and low cost solution to help them decarbonize and scale. We are so excited to be a part of this transformative journey,” said Marius Swart, General Partner, Pace Ventures. 

“GC is thrilled to be a part of Turnover Lab's journey as their team continues to innovate and commercialize their technology,” said Kamel Ramdani, EVP of Innovation & Growth Platforms at PTT Global Chemical Public Company Limited (GC) and President of GC Ventures America. “Turnover's platform technology holds the potential not only to assist GC and the wider GC ecosystem in attaining net zero goals, but also to make a significant impact in curbing industrial emissions on a global scale."

About Turnover Labs 

Turnover Labs is on a mission to rapidly decarbonize the chemical industry. Their proprietary technologies empower the building of the most durable electrolyzers to withstand the harsh conditions found in industrial facilities. Turnover Labs aims to disrupt the low-carbon chemical market by converting the impure, waste CO2 streams emitted from manufacturing directly into valuable chemical building blocks for the facility’s use. 

By installing within existing operations, their solution can produce valuable, commodity chemicals out of waste CO2 rather than petroleum, and find new uses for emissions coming out of industry that aren’t suitable for other carbon capture solutions. For more information, please visit http://www.turnoverlabs.com/ and follow on LinkedIn.