Conversation
Highlights

How Vycarb Closed a Climate Tech Seed Round in 2025’s Downturn: Building International Pipeline Before Policy Collapsed

In 2025, US-based climate tech funding contracted sharply. The new administration’s reversal on climate policy sent shockwaves through the sector. Companies dependent on domestic tax credits and DOE funding mechanisms found themselves stranded mid-raise.

Garrett Boudinot closed Vycarb’s seed round anyway.

In a recent episode of BUILDERS, Garrett explained how the Brooklyn-based carbon storage company survived one of climate tech’s harshest fundraising environments—not through pivoting after the crisis hit, but through strategic positioning years earlier that anticipated exactly this scenario.

From Voluntary ESG Theater to Compliance Economics

Vycarb‘s technology accelerates ocean chemistry: CO2 enters their system, reacts with calcium and magnesium in water, and converts to bicarbonate—the same stable molecule comprising over 90% of Earth’s surface carbon, sequestered for hundreds of thousands of years. Unlike geological storage requiring specific underground formations, their process works anywhere with water access.

The company’s first customers were voluntary market aggregators. Frontier Fund—the collective including Shopify and Google—provided early revenue by pre-purchasing future carbon removal credits. “It’s almost like a grant application which again, as a formerly academic scientist was in my wheelhouse,” Garrett said. “We’re proposing what we want to do and we’re justifying how it will have a positive climate impact.”

These progressive buyers did more than provide revenue—they funded category infrastructure. They established verification standards, built independent auditing processes, and created proof points for future customers. But Garrett recognized a fundamental problem with the voluntary market.

“If you talk to any corporate sustainability officer, they’re going to say that yes, we have a plan to decarbonize our emissions,” he explained. “If you ask for details, they might say, yeah, it’s 50% by 2050 or you know, 80% by 2040, but they’re longer term.”

Long timelines meant low urgency. And low urgency meant sustainability constantly lost internal resource battles against revenue-generating priorities.

The market inflection came in 2022-2023. “Back in 2022, 2023, there was this whole push that hey, ESG is driving money going towards offsetting and reducing carbon emissions on a voluntary scheme. There is going to be an explosion of buyers,” Garrett said. “There has certainly been an increase…But actually as Vicarb’s developed…we really see that ICP most strongly where there’s a higher urgency in this solution.”

Garrett repositioned Vycarb around compliance-driven markets. The primary target: Singapore, where industrial facilities emit approximately 50 million tons of CO2 annually and face direct per-ton carbon tax penalties.

The economics became straightforward. “Those companies have to pay a certain number of dollars per ton of CO2 that they emit. And if they deploy or pay for a technology like vicarbs, as long as we’re cheaper than what they have to pay the government for not being compliant, then they’re actually financially benefiting.”

This wasn’t sustainability messaging—it was cost avoidance. “There it’s more than just, you know, a pretty picture on their ESG report, but it actually comes down to their bottom line,” Garrett said. “And that’s really where everyone wants to see the market move more broadly.”

Geographic Diversification as Pre-Emptive Risk Management

The compliance focus drove international expansion into Asia Pacific and European markets with established carbon pricing mechanisms. Critically, this happened before US policy uncertainty materialized.

“Fortunately for us, just, I’ll call it serendipitously, although I’d like to think there was some proper strategic planning there, we had prior to 2025 as a US based climate tech company, just organically done a lot of work internationally in Asia Pacific, in Europe where there are stronger compliance schemes,” Garrett said.

He emphasized the timeline deliberately: “I benchmark prior to 2025 because obviously with the current administration in the US that’s been a huge blow to this overall industry, frankly.”

Early investor Twynam, an Australian decarbonization VC, provided more than capital—they built market access infrastructure. “Their value proposition is hey, we can help Vicarb access this Asia Pacific market. We see huge opportunity for a technology like vicarbs,” Garrett explained. “But we’re going to provide a lot more than, you know, the dollars. We’re going to make specific connections into those markets.”

“I do think that was strategic, you know, on their part seeing the opportunity that then was also, you know, strategic on our part to take advantage of that, to diversify from a go to market perspective,” he added.

By 2025, when US climate policy reversed, Vycarb wasn’t executing an emergency pivot. “Going into 2025 we already had a pipeline of partners, a bunch of investors outside of the US who are driven by either compliance markets or at least stronger sustainability initiatives in the countries that they’re based that I think really put us in a good position.”

The result: regulatory hedging that converted potential existential risk into survivable headwind.

Centralized Validation, Distributed Market Readiness

Despite international customer development, Vycarb avoided distributed team costs. “The team’s almost entirely based in Brooklyn, New York and prior to Q4, 2025 was 100% based in New York,” Garrett said.

This capital efficiency was possible through technical design. Their Brooklyn Navy Yard pilot facility replicates international water chemistry conditions without geographic distribution. “Where we take water, we add CO2, we add a source of calcium, magnesium, that’s what drives that chemical process to store the CO2. It’s what mimics the ocean’s natural chemistry and the variability in water that we might have in Singapore versus in Australia versus in New York, we can mimic at our pilot site in New York,” Garrett explained.

The company validates performance metrics, tests different CO2 source compatibility, and proves commercial readiness across geographies from a single controlled environment. “We’re on our third iteratively scaled pilot there,” Garrett noted, demonstrating iterative technical de-risking without scaling operational overhead prematurely.

The Navy Yard location also became a sales asset. “One of the really nice things about being based in New York and having a facility on the east river where the New York ferry, New York City ferry, goes right by is anyone around the world typically has someone from their team going through New York at least once a year,” Garrett said. “And so we bring a lot of folks into our pilot site and do just boots on the ground face to face showing how the technology works.”

This “show, then tell” philosophy prioritized proof over positioning. “I use a phrase of show, then tell right of getting the milestone completed, getting that pilot off the ground, and then telling people about it,” he explained.

In nascent categories where buyers lack reference points, physical demonstration answers questions abstract messaging cannot. Prospects see CO2 entering the system, watch the chemical process occur, and observe bicarbonate formation—tangible proof replacing theoretical claims.

Strategic Capital as Channel Development

Vycarb’s cap table includes Idemitsu, Rio Tinto, Mitsui, OSK Lines, and Shell—industrial corporates that function as active channel partners, not passive investors.

“We’ve got some great strategic investors now on the cap table, groups like Idemitsu, Rio Tinto, Mitsui, OSK Lines, Shell,” Garrett said. “And so that’s also great to just have those institutional investors. A logo of a trusted company on the deck is, you know that says a thousand words. But then they provide those channel partnerships to also get our technology out there.”

These relationships opened pipeline in cement, aluminum, shipping, and mining—sectors with decarbonization pressure but where cold outbound fails. “Aluminum and cement are two industries that we have a huge impact opportunity in. They have specific decarbonization incentives. They’re also rather siloed,” Garrett explained. “So we’ve been able to get into some of the industry publications there sharing the results of what we’ve been able to do. That’s been really helpful to unlock some of those opportunities.”

The combination—strategic investor logos providing credibility, direct channel access into target accounts, and industry-specific PR in trade publications—created multi-threaded market entry into otherwise impenetrable verticals.

Execution Speed as Investor De-Risking

When fundraising opened, investors evaluated Vycarb against deteriorating sector fundamentals. What differentiated the company was proof of rapid execution.

“Within six months of starting the company, we had our first real world pilot out on the ground,” Garrett said. Three years in, they’re “on our third iteratively scaled pilot.” This track record demonstrated the team could overcome not just technical challenges but operational complexity: supply chain development, permitting navigation, and verification methodology creation.

“That permitting of new clean tech programs, we’ve demonstrated that as well,” Garrett noted, referencing the abundance agenda discussion around infrastructure deployment barriers.

US investors cited specific de-risking factors. “What we really like about VI CARB is that it’s got a differentiated business model. So we’re not dependent on just, you know, DOE funding mechanism or a single tax credit in one area. We can play in lots of different markets,” Garrett explained. “And we’ve already made progress in specific international markets with marquee customers there that provided a lot of investor confidence.”

Geographic diversification, business model resilience across regulatory regimes, and execution velocity combined to make Vycarb investable despite sector-wide contraction.

“One of the greatest achievements at least of my life is successfully closing a seed round as a climate tech company in the US in 2025,” Garrett said. The achievement wasn’t closing capital—it was building a company positioned to survive policy volatility before that volatility arrived.

Implementation Lessons for Regulatory-Dependent Categories

For founders in categories subject to regulatory capture—fintech, healthcare, energy, financial services—Vycarb’s playbook offers tactical guidance:

First, identify where your solution creates direct P&L impact versus values alignment. Voluntary adoption stalls when budgets tighten. Compliance-driven or cost-avoidance buyers have budget already allocated to the problem you’re solving.

Second, build international presence in stable regulatory environments before domestic policy becomes uncertain. This isn’t expansion—it’s insurance. The time to build these relationships is when you don’t need them, not when domestic pipeline evaporates overnight.

Third, validate globally from centralized operations until you hit deployment scale. Geographic distribution is expensive. Prove commercial readiness across markets from controlled environments before scaling operational overhead.

Fourth, prioritize strategic investors who provide channel access over those offering only capital and advice. In complex industrial B2B, investor networks outperform sales teams at initial penetration.

Finally, move fast enough to build proof points before market conditions deteriorate. Garrett’s team went from founding to first pilot in six months and are now on their third iteration. Speed created defensibility when the fundraising environment collapsed.

Looking ahead, Garrett’s vision positions Vycarb to become “the largest carbon storage solution on the planet” by deploying where water exists rather than where specific geology permits. “Water is pretty ubiquitous,” he said, noting the technology could reach “100,000 to a million tons of CO2 per location” across distributed deployments.

The near-term target: millions of tons within five years. Long-term: hundreds of millions of tons sequestered.

But the real lesson isn’t about carbon storage—it’s about building resilient GTM in volatile regulatory environments. Garrett’s 2025 fundraise success came from decisions made in 2022-2023, when most US climate founders were still betting everything on domestic policy stability.