Direct Air Capture Companies, Startups & Research

Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Carbon Engineering Ltd., Climeworks AG and Siemens AG are among the companies active in direct air capture. Occidental is advancing Carbon Engineering’s liquid-solvent process and storage projects; Carbon Engineering developed an alkaline-solvent system. Siemens has patented DAC serviceability features and partnered with Saudi Aramco on a pilot. Startups include Carbon Capture Company AB, Heirloom Carbon and Avnos Inc.

Carbon Capture Company AB, Heirloom Carbon and Avnos Inc. are notable startups in the available data. Carbon Capture Company AB is developing modular equipment with sorbent modules; Heirloom uses limestone in a mineral-based capture and regeneration process; Avnos is developing a humidity-driven system that also produces water. These represent different technical routes, so their promise depends on performance, scale-up and project economics.

Chinese Academy of Sciences CAS, Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University are prominent research organizations in the data, with 121, 76 and 68 documents respectively in the recent window. Their work includes solid amine sorbents, electrochemical regeneration and moisture-swing capture. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is also active, including research on stability-aware discovery of metal–organic frameworks for DAC.

Funding data list $71,135,204 across 94 grants since 2020, and 32 funding rounds totaling $14,280,328,172. The funding-round classifications include project, real estate and infrastructure finance as well as other round types, so the round total is broader than startup equity funding. These figures provide a recorded funding picture, not a clean measure of capital invested solely in DAC technology.

Robert Bosch GmbH leads the listed patent holders with 37 patents, followed by Siemens Energy Global GmbH & with 26. Volkswagen Group has 10, while Siemens AG and Climeworks AG each have 8. Bosch’s patents include atmospheric CO2 capture designs that pair solid sorbents with downstream mineralization, including systems using amine-functionalized sorbents.

No: patent activity declined 41.2% in the last 12 months compared with the previous 12 months. The data include 386 patents in the 24-month window. Patent counts do not measure technical quality or commercial readiness, and activity varies by approach; solid amine sorbents, electrochemical capture and mineralization each account for notable recent patent activity.

Direct air capture is moving into early commercial deployment, but it remains a developing technology with unresolved cost, energy and scale-up challenges. Ucaneo started a Berlin plant in July 2026 with a stated capture capacity of 150 tonnes per year, and Siemens partnered with Ucaneo that month to support scaling. Research continues on sorbent durability, regeneration and process integration.

September 2026 research includes Empa’s scale-consistent model for polymer-based adsorbents and an integrated DAC and atmospheric-water-harvesting assessment by Zhejiang University and Durham University. Other recent work addresses microwave-responsive sorbents and stability-aware MOF discovery. In July 2026, Siemens and Ucaneo announced a scaling partnership, and Ucaneo started a DAC plant in Berlin.

The main approaches include liquid alkaline solvents, solid amine sorbents, porous solid adsorbents, electrochemical capture, moisture-swing capture, and mineralization or crystallization. They differ in how they bind CO2 and how they regenerate or store it. Solvents and solid sorbents rely on chemical or physical capture; electrochemical and moisture-swing methods use electricity or humidity changes, while mineralization aims to convert captured carbon into stable solids.

The listed applications include geologic carbon removal, synthetic fuels and chemicals, industrial CO2 supply, negative-emissions energy and building-integrated capture. Geologic storage is the largest application category in the data, with 2,280 documents. Captured CO2 can also serve as a feedstock for products, while building-integrated systems seek to use existing ventilation infrastructure; the climate value depends on energy use and the carbon’s eventual fate.