Clean energy company Mantle8 announced that it has raised €31 million (USD$36 million) in a Series A funding round, with proceeds aimed at scaling and commercializing the company’s natural hydrogen explorations technology platform.
Hydrogen is viewed as one of the key building blocks of the transition to a cleaner energy future, particularly for industrial and transport sectors with difficult to abate emissions, in which renewable energy solutions such as wind or solar are less practical. Around 90 million metric tons of hydrogen are produced annually, although the vast majority is extracted using fossil fuels, which create pollutants and GHG emissions.
Founded in 2018 by founder and CEO Emmanuel Masini, France-based Mantle8 develops geoscience and imaging technologies designed to identify naturally occurring hydrogen reservoirs beneath the Earth’s surface.
According to the Mantle8, the company’s technology for identifying commercially viable natural hydrogen reserves reduces exploration risk and cost, significantly lowering the average cost of clean hydrogen supply, with economic models projecting production costs as low as €0.80 per kg.
The company said that the new capital will be deployed during the next 2 years to fund its natural hydrogen exploration and drilling campaign, deploying its technology across its global development pipeline to identify and rank the most promising opportunities, and then drilling the sites to confirm natural hydrogen accumulations and to evaluate volume, purity, and reservoir quality in support of commercially viable, large-scale production.
Emmanuel Masini, Founder and CEO of Mantle8 said:
“This raise reflects the growing conviction among leading clean tech investors that natural hydrogen is a resource worth pursuing at scale. The existence of natural hydrogen is a well-established scientific fact; the challenge has been finding free gas accumulations of high-purity hydrogen that are commercially viable.”
The new funding round was led by Sandwater and included participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bpifrance through the Ecotechnologies 2 fund managed on behalf of the French government, IP Group, Wind Capital and Calderion, an investment platform backed by Audacia.
Tom Even Mortensen, Founder and Managing Partner of Sandwater said:
“Natural hydrogen sits at the intersection of energy transition and resource discovery, two areas where Europe must lead as it seeks energy sovereignty. This is a demanding challenge but with the potential to create a new clean energy source, which is what we need and why we see in Mantle8 the opportunity for outsized impact and return.”
