Concrete is the most widely used material on earth after water, and we’re running out of a key ingredient. Widely used cement substitutes, known as supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), have historically come from heavily polluting coal plants and iron blast furnaces. As those industrial processes are retired across the U.S. and Europe, SCM supply is shrinking. At the same time, global infrastructure is projected to double over the next 40 years.
SOSV portfolio company, Cocoon spoke to Axios following its $15M Series A, sharing how it’s unlocking a new, scalable source of cement substitutes, faster and more capital-efficiently than existing alternatives.
The Sereis A was led by 2150 and Brick & Mortar Ventures with participation from TVC, Wireframe Ventures, Celsius Industries, Gigascale Capital, and SOSV.
With this funding, Cocoon will deploy its first commercial demonstration facility in the U.S. and expand its team—hiring engineers, materials scientists, and commercial talent in the UK, alongside plant operators and technical staff in the U.S.
Did you know?
Bruce Donald, Marcel Frenkel and Mark Hallen are analyzing over 19,290,123 compounds per second at quantum accuracies to develop drugs to previously incurable cancers.
Funded with $57 million from DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital and SOSV, among others, unspun aims to eliminate 1% of global carbon emissions
While it might look like a plant-based food company, NotCo is in the data and AI business—and aims to disrupt R&D in many industries that use animal and plant ingredients.
Gilberto Loureiro grew up inspecting fabrics in a Portuguese textile factory. With Smartex, he and co-founders Antonio Rocha and Paulo Ribeiro are eliminating textile defects—and their enormous cost both to manufacturers and the environment.
Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao have an uncanny talent for finding value where others see waste. Their plastics upcycling company, Novoloop, just raised an $21m Series A to prove it.
To find the future of food, you may have to look no further than Emeryville, CA, a small city by the San Francisco Bay, where Upside Foods has built a 53,000-square-foot production facility for cultivated meat, the first of its kind.
In a timeless dilemma for new parents, Radhika and her husband Bharath discovered early that their baby daughter was a fussy sleeper. The situation left them tired and frustrated; being effective at work became a challenge.
In December 2021 Prellis raised a $14.5 million Series B and has signed partnerships with pharmaceutical behemoths including Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi.
It was 2016, and Chiu Chau was on the ropes. He had pitched nearly 150 venture capital firms. No one would invest. Everyone doubted the startup with the open-source laboratory robot.
Adebayo (“Ade”) Alonge and Amy Kao, co-founders of RxAll had nvented a handheld scanner for detecting counterfeit prescription drugs—an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry that kills an estimated 1 million people annually globally and 100,000 in Africa.