Building a cleantech company in a capital-constrained world | Etosha Cave, Opus 12 | Energy Seminar
Channel: Stanford ENERGY
Date: 19/11/2020

Opus 12 is an emerging energy startup created by three Stanford alumni with an unconventional path to raising funds for the company.  Opus 12 is developing a range of devices that recycles CO2 into cost-competitive chemicals and fuels that could impact a $300 billion market.  The Opus 12 technology bolts onto any source of CO2 emissions, and with only water and electricity as inputs, transforms that CO2 into some of the world's most critical chemical products.

When starting the company, the founders quickly realized their technology would not fit within the traditional VC model.  To get the technology off the ground, Opus 12 has - since its inception - attracted funding from various sources both traditional and non-traditional that includes over $22 million from philanthropic sources, government, and top-tier institutional investors.   The company has built its first commercial unit in collaboration with a world-leading systems integrator and is scaling up that unit and engaging with customers for pilot and proof studies.  The company was featured in Rolling Stone's 25 People Shaping the Next 50 Years and the New York Times's Climate Visionaries.

Etosha (Eee-tah-sha) Cave, co-founder, will discuss the vision of Opus 12 and how unconventional funding sources can be leveraged to develop early stage energy technologies. 

Speaker bio

Etosha Cave is a co-founder of Opus 12 and has a background in the electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide into fuels and high-value chemicals.  Opus12 has developed a device that recycles CO₂ into cost-competitive chemicals and fuels. Their technology bolts onto any source of CO₂ emissions, and with only water and electricity as inputs, transforms that CO₂ into some of the world's most critical chemical products. They can reduce the carbon footprint of the world’s heaviest emitters, while creating a new revenue stream from what is discarded today as a waste product.

Etosha earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford. Cave has been an Accel Innovation Scholar, an Echoing Green Fellow, a Smithsonian Institution Innovators to Watch. In 2018, Vanity Fair named Cave one of 26 Women of Color Diversifying Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, Media, and Beyond.