Participated · Seed · Aug 2025

Pearl Edison is a Detroit startup that partners with utilities and local governments to drive home energy-efficiency upgrades. The company builds white‑labeled websites for utility partners, runs outreach campaigns to sign up customers, and uses multiple data sources to design jobs and generate guaranteed prices. After an initial software design, Pearl Edison dispatches workers to verify conditions in the field before finalizing plans, then sends vetted contractors to complete installations. It earns revenue on the installs themselves and estimates most jobs will cost less than its quoted price. Pearl Edison says homeowners save money because installers don’t need to spend time acquiring customers. The company already has programs with two utilities (DT Energy and Duquesne Light) and the city of Ann Arbor, and the CEO said it will add two more utilities this year. Financially, the company recently closed a seed fundraise to support growth.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2024

CREW Carbon offers a process intensification solution for wastewater treatment that uses strategically-sourced alkaline minerals to optimize pH and alkalinity, improving biological performance, settleability, and plant capacity while permanently sequestering CO2. Since beginning commercial operations in 2024, CREW has deployed at nearly 10 facilities across the U.S. and Europe and secured long-term RFPs with utilities. The company has captured over 2,000 tons of CO2 and secured more than $33 million in carbon removal offtake agreements, delivering verified carbon removal credits to corporate buyers. CREW has developed proprietary measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) capabilities and is developing a scalable analytics platform to provide operational insights and process optimization. Financial and strategic support from the Series A will be used to scale deployments, expand customer engagements, and add key hires in wastewater process, technology, supply chain, and business development.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2024

Lamarr.AI, led by CEO Tarek Rakha, provides automated solutions for building envelope diagnostics and retrofitting. It leverages drones, thermal imaging and AI-based analytics to detect, diagnose and guide fixes for envelope defects. The company has worked with numerous building owners and facilities managers and says it has saved more than $1M in engineering and construction costs by automatically identifying issues such as deteriorated window seals and leaky roofs. Lamarr.AI intends to use its newly raised funds to productize and scale tools that eliminate carbon emissions while reducing building maintenance and ownership costs. The startup raised $1.1M in a Pre-Seed round led by Hazelview Ventures, with participation from milemark•capital, Newlab, Georgia Tech’s Venture Fund and MIT’s SBXi Fund. The funding is aimed at supporting commercialization and scaling of its diagnostics and retrofitting toolset.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2024

Mantel Capture is developing the first molten-salt-based carbon capture technology designed to operate at the high temperatures inside boilers, kilns, and furnaces. Its system uses molten borates and has demonstrated carbon capture at lab scale of about 0.5 tonnes per day. The company plans a demonstration project at an industrial site that is roughly 10 times larger than the lab tests and is rated to capture about 1,800 tonnes of CO2 per year. Funding from the recent round will be used to implement that demonstration and to pave the way for full-scale commercial deployment of its high-temperature capture systems. Mantel positions its approach as enabling higher efficiency and substantial cost reductions, which it says can unlock broader deployment of carbon capture and help reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The company is based in Boston, MA.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2024

Mantel Capture is developing molten-borate (molten-salt) high-temperature carbon capture systems designed for boilers, kilns and furnaces in heavy industry. Its technology captures CO2 at the emission source using molten borates, recovering high-grade heat during capture to offset regeneration energy. Mantel says this enables capture costs more than half lower than conventional amine-based carbon capture technologies. The company demonstrated lab-scale capture of about 0.5 tonnes per day and plans a demonstration project rated to capture roughly 1,800 tonnes of CO2 per year. The $30 million Series A will fund the industrial demonstration and support design and preparation for full-scale commercial deployment. Mantel targets hard-to-abate sectors such as cement, steel, chemicals and natural gas power plants. Mantel develops a high-temperature, liquid-phase carbon-capture system designed to operate inside boilers, kilns, and furnaces. The technology targets hard-to-abate industries such as industrial heat, cement, steel, and hydrogen, and can pair with biogenic sources for carbon dioxide removal. Mantel was spun out of MIT after research with Professors T. Alan Hatton and Takuya Harada. The company says the new funding will accelerate technology development, prototype testing, and initial deployment. After achieving a lab-scale flow loop demonstration, Mantel plans to use fresh capital to build a commercial-scale demonstration plant. Mantel was founded in 2022 by Cameron Halliday (CEO), Danielle Colson (COO), and Sean Robertson (CTO).