Airhive, a London-based direct air capture (DAC) startup, has acquired its Dutch rival Carbyon. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The combined company will operate under Airhive's name. Early-stage research will be based at Carbyon's home on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, where the merged team will develop a next-generation technology Airhive calls Cascade.
Both companies build solid-sorbent DAC, which uses reactive minerals to pull carbon dioxide out of the air.
Airhive got to market faster, adapting fluidised bed equipment from the food and pharmaceutical industries.
Carbyon's strength is in the lab, where it has developed a fast-reacting sorbent that cuts energy use.
Hans De Neve, founder of Carbyon, said the deal pairs Airhive's "execution power and de-risked technology" with Carbyon's R&D depth.
Rory Brown, founder and CEO of Airhive, said the acquisition would help it achieve its goal of lower the cost of DAC technology.
“The goal in DAC is achieving low costs at large operational scale," he said. "Leveraging Carbyon’s impressive R&D capabilities will accelerate innovation and help us reach that goal quicker.”
Its unclear whether De Neve will remain at the join company. We reached out to Airhive and Carbyon for comment and will update this piece if they reply.
Consolidation phase?
Carbyon, an Eindhoven spin-out from Dutch research institute TNO, raised around €25m from investors including Chris Sacca's Lowercarbon Capital, Siemens Financial Services and Omnes Capital.
Airhive has taken a different route, raising just one pre-seed round from AP Ventures and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners while leaning on grants and carbon-credit prepurchases. Its acquisition of Carbyon comes amid a tough market for DAC companies.
Venture funding for carbon removal fell more than 13% in the year to mid-2025, per PitchBook data. Climeworks, the sector's best-funded company, cut 22% of its staff last year, while startups including Noya and Nori have shut down.
"Market oscillations have underlined the case for consolidation," said Airhive in a press statement Tuesday.
As for its own balance sheet, Airhive is betting that selling CO2 will pay where selling credits has not.
It is working with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, its investor and customer, to install a DAC unit at a large European bottling plant to supply food-grade CO2 for fizzy drinks. The company says the DAC business model is shifting away from reliance on carbon-credit revenue.
The enlarged Airhive will also supply all the solid-sorbent capacity at UnionDAC, the 60,000-tonne-per-year facility it is building at Teesside with Mission Zero and Progressive Energy, as Impact Loop previously reported.