CLIMEWORKS

Jan Wurzbacher and Christoph Gebald met at ETH Zurich in Switzerland while studying mechanical engineering. They became obsessed with the idea that you could build machines to reverse climate change — not just slow it down, but actually pull existing CO2 out of the air.

They founded Climeworks in 2009, spent years developing their filter technology, and launched their first commercial plant in 2017 in Hinwil, Switzerland. In 2021, they opened Orca in Iceland — the world's first large-scale direct air capture and storage facility.

In 2024, they launched Mammoth, ten times larger than Orca.

Climeworks builds and operates direct air capture (DAC) plants — giant machines that pull CO2 directly from the atmosphere. The captured carbon is either stored permanently underground (they partner with Carbfix in Iceland to mineralize it into rock) or sold for industrial use.

Revenue comes from carbon removal credits sold to corporations and governments. Companies pay Climeworks to permanently remove their carbon emissions.

Orca (first commercial DAC plant), Mammoth (10x scale DAC plant), Carbon removal credits, Carbfix underground storage partnership

Scale up plant size aggressively (Mammoth is 10x Orca), drive down cost per ton through engineering improvements, lock in long-term corporate contracts to guarantee revenue. They have advance purchase agreements from Microsoft, Stripe, Shopify, and the US government (via the DOE).

The strategy is: prove the tech works, prove corporations will pay, then build everywhere.

Cost. Direct air capture is still expensive — around $600-$1,000 per ton of CO2 removed.

For context, a carbon credit on the voluntary market trades for $5-$50. Climeworks needs to get costs down to $200-$300 per ton to be commercially viable at scale.

Energy consumption is the other big challenge — the plants need enormous amounts of clean energy to run, which is why Iceland (abundant geothermal power) is their home base.

GIC (Singapore sovereign wealth), Partners Group, Baillie Gifford, John Doerr, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund