Funding Winter

The name says it all. Ctrl-S — the keyboard shortcut for save — is a new company doing exactly that for the direct air capture sector: saving the work before it’s lost. Here’s the context. DAC investment has dropped more than 60% from its 2022 peak. The Trump administration cancelled tens of millions in federal DAC funding. Companies that raised on the 2021-2022 climate hype cycle are running out of runway, and when a deeptech startup dies, its IP, experimental data, and hard-won engineering knowledge often die with it. Papers in drawers. Lab notebooks in storage units. Sorbent formulations that took years to develop, gone. ...