What does it actually take to decarbonize one of the world’s most carbon-intensive industries, and how do you build, fund, and scale the company that bets on it? The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, host Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing Queens Carbon CEO & Co-Founder Daniel Kopp to discuss enabling built environment decarbonization through cement and concrete that requires lower energy and water usage, optimizing various financing structures to scale the company, leveraging AI and diverse team to build a full product system.
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Show Notes
- Cement and concrete are not the same thing. Cement is the glue that holds concrete together, and it is manufactured at industrial kilns burning limestone at temperatures similar to molten lava, which makes it responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions.
- Per ton, cement actually has a low carbon footprint. The problem is pure volume. The world builds the equivalent of a New York City every single month in concrete, and that scale creates an immense CO2 intensity problem.
- Queens Carbon’s founding thesis was that the cement industry’s complexity cannot be leveled up and still succeed at scale. The technology they built had to use the same feedstocks, same site, same energy type, and familiar equipment so producers faced no sticker shock or retraining burden.
- Their key innovation is called hydrothermal vapor, which uses steam and pressure instead of extreme heat to catalyze the chemical reaction. Traditional cement manufacturing fires kilns at 1,400 degrees Celsius; Queens Carbon operates at less than half that temperature.
- This lower temperature process actually requires less energy than existing clinker production, which is unheard of in the cement industry. Every other next-generation cement technology in the space requires higher energy, not lower.
- Because their system runs at lower temperatures, Queens Carbon has enormous flexibility in fuel source. They can use a conventional flame, electricity, waste heat, or geothermal energy, and they design each installation to fit the energy mix available at that specific site.
- Their product strategy covers two options: a partial cement replacement called QSCM and a full cement replacement. The partial replacement can increase its substitution percentage over time as the technology scales, creating a gradual commercialization path.
- One of the most interesting business model insights is helping cement manufacturers vertically integrate SCM production. Traditionally, supplementary cementitious materials came from steel and power plant waste. Queens Carbon lets cement producers make their own SCMs from the limestone, sand, and clay they already own.
- The biggest surprise for Daniel coming out of academia was how long venture fundraising takes. Queens Carbon had an excellent technology head start built on 10 years of academic research, but the financial and emotional runway required for a venture raise was something he had to learn from scratch.
- Queens Carbon secured a trifecta of capital types: venture, government grants, and strategic corporate investment. Each pool of capital validated the others, and the three self-catalyzed in a way that would not have worked if they had pursued only one or two of the three.
- Their earliest catalytic capital came from winning the Breakthrough Energy Fellows grant in 2022, which allowed them to leave the university on day one, hire top people, and buy state-of-the-art equipment immediately rather than waiting years.
- In 2023, Queens Carbon was the only cement company to receive the DOE ARPA-E Scale Up award, worth $14.5 million to demonstrate the technology at an existing cement plant. Total capital secured to date is over $33 million.
- Buzzi Unicem, one of the world’s largest cement producers, invested in their seed round and is partnering on the demonstration plant. Having a strategic cement manufacturer in the round helped unlock both the grant agency and the venture community.
- The eventual product Queens Carbon wants to sell is not cement itself but a system, powered by Queens Carbon software with an AI backbone, that lets cement manufacturers make low-carbon products themselves. All the data they are generating today is building toward that software platform.
- AI and LLMs are already deployed across Queens Carbon’s R&D, engineering, and administrative operations. On the science side, AI acts as a junior scientist to every researcher on the team, processing data in real time and accelerating discovery.
- Profitable sustainability is the company’s core belief: if a technology cannot match the price of existing cement, it is probably the wrong technology for the cement space. Sustainability that cannot compete on unit economics will not scale.
- The next 12 months are a “put up or shut up” moment for Queens Carbon. They are running a one-ton-per-day pilot plant in New Jersey now and will deploy a 10-ton-per-day system at a Buzzi Unicem site within a year to prove out the technology in the field.
- The commercial plant target is 100 to 1,000 tons per day, and they expect to reach it by 2029 or 2030. At that scale, the capital stack will need to include substantial debt financing in addition to venture and grants.
- Queens Carbon is currently raising their Series A and is actively seeking cement manufacturers, ready-mix companies, architects, builders, and investors who want to participate. They want to secure commercial commitments that give the technology a quantified home before it is fully built.
- When asked what makes a great product leader, Daniel’s answer was the same as his answer about team risk: it is all about people. Great product leaders know how to work with a team of experts, get excellence out of each person, and guide the group toward a final outcome without needing to own every technical detail themselves.
About the speaker
Daniel Kopp is CEO and Co-Founder of Queens Carbon, where he leads a team building a better way to manufacture cement. He earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Rutgers University, where he co-invented Queens Carbon’s patented hydrothermal manufacturing technology. Daniel’s approach, which also guides technology development at Queens Carbon, is rooted in a simple belief: breakthrough technologies only matter if they win on economics. The solution must cost less than the technology it replaces, work within existing plants and supply chains, and dramatically reduce CO₂ emissions without relying on subsidies, carbon credits, or complex co-production schemes.
About the host
Maggie Wong is an accomplished product management and capital markets leader with over 15 years of experience in driving product strategy, delivering global products, fundraising & capital allocation, and leading cross-functional teams. Outside of her role at Silicon Valley Bank to support New York / East Coast based climate tech companies and investors, she is also experienced in increasing program impact, growing community reach and implementing DEI initiatives at travel and fintech non-profits. Maggie is passionate about making a social impact for the next generation, tackling climate change and traveling. She is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese and a beginner in Spanish.