Atoco is a California-based climate technology startup founded in 2020 by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Professor Omar Yaghi. The firm – a compound of ‘atom’ and ‘company’ – is developing atmospheric water harvesting, direct air capture (DAC) and post-combustion capture.
How does the technology work?
Atoco is building its technologies around reticular chemistry – a field pioneered by Yaghi. The company engineers microscopic materials from metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). Since these materials possess massive internal surface areas, they can be precisely tailored to selectively bind to and extract specific molecules.
Vice-President of Business Development Magnus Bach said, “We are in a position where we can actually design materials with very specific properties in mind, and we can actually scale the manufacturing of these novel materials.”
He said the surface areas serve as “parking lots for molecules”, regardless of whether they are CO2, hydrogen or water.
“The biggest difference is that on atmospheric water harvesting, we are OEM, so we produce containerised systems, whereas on the carbon capture side, we would produce capture modules that you could install into point source or a DAC system. It will be a gradual slope, entailing custom-developed solutions designed specifically for a carbon capture system process.”
What are its primary focus areas?
Atoco claims it can manufacture units that generate “thousands of litres of drinking water per day” by pulling moisture directly out of the air. Powered using low-grade waste heat or sunlight, these systems can even function in extremely dry, arid desert environments.
The company also develops solid-state post-combustion capture and DAC modules which aim to bypass the costly energy requirements of older carbon capture methods by avoiding the need to pre-dry airstreams and instead use low-grade waste heat to extract trapped carbon.
How is it progressing towards commercialisation?
Atoco is still in the pre-commercial stage but deploying industrial prototypes, with atmospheric water harvesting expected to launch later this year. Carbon capture commercialisation is expected to be a year away, focusing on low and ultra-low CO2 concentrations.
Bach said, “If you’re looking at the cost of carbon capture right now, with DAC for instance, people have been targeting $100 per tonne for maybe five or six years and nobody is anywhere near that point. The industry is starting to understand that in order to make that shift to a cost level where it can enable wider adoption, we need to think differently about the technologies we’re using.”
What specific sectors are targeted?
Data centres are firmly in its sights, as modular, nano-engineered materials could turn data centre waste heat into revenue. By using low-grade thermal exhaust, Atoco could enable data centres to continuously capture ambient CO₂, produce high-quality distilled water on-site, and offset emissions from backup power generators, significantly improving operational sustainability and lowering the total cost of ownership.
“All the developers have sustainability requirements in terms of their CO₂ footprint, so they will somehow need to address the concerns on the energy side … we can use these non-engineered reticular materials to leverage the low-grade waste heat to produce water and reduce the CO2,” added Bach.
How is Atoco using AI?
In line with most companies, Atoco is actively leveraging AI to accelerate material design and testing in a bid to reduce energy consumption and costs. “Professor Yaghi is for sure one of the pioneers and we’re lucky to have a chief science officer who is so much ahead of the curve when it comes to material science,” said Bach.
What financing is in place?
Bach said it is fully financed by Revonence Technologies International, a private equity and holding company, until commercialisation but scaling up manufacturing on the atmospheric water harvesting side will require “some funding”.
