Aether Fuels raises $34m to scale SAF, renewable fuels

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Advanced climate technology company Aether Fuels announced that it has raised $34m in Series A financing from a syndicate to scale development of renewable fuels for aviation and marine sectors.

The round was led by AP Ventures, which also includes Chevron Technology Ventures, CDP Venture Capital and Zeon Ventures. Series Seed lead investor Xora Innovation and other existing investors TechEnergy Ventures, Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, Foothill Ventures and JetBlue Ventures also participated.

The investment round puts Aether on track to open a 100 gallon-per-day test plant that builds on prior success of its solution. 

“We are pleased to add Aether to our portfolio of climate companies, and delighted to join this impressive syndicate,” said AP Ventures’ Kevin Eggers.

Aether plans to use the funds to accelerate the scale-up of Aether Aurora, the company’s proprietary technology to create sustainable fuels for the aviation and ocean shipping industries.

Aether Aurora leverages technology licensed from Aether’s strategic partner GTI Energy promising breakthrough economics via a transformed Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process by combining innovations in chemistry (catalysts), equipment (reactors), and process flows to slash plant investment and operating costs, while simultaneously driving up yield.

The company claims that its technology is highly flexible and can convert a wide range of waste carbon feedstocks into jet fuel and other liquid hydrocarbons and.

“This is a group of financial and strategic leaders that see clearly the need to expand the supply of sustainable fuels. However, without dramatically scaling the capacity to produce the fuels, supply will remain seriously constrained, and the transition will be slow, if not impossible … The result: more product at vastly lower CapEx costs than existing approaches,” said Conor Morgan, CEO, Aether.