We love concrete. We use it everywhere — skyscrapers, data centers, roofs, sidewalks, homes. The problem is, concrete doesn’t love us. Its key ingredient, cement, is the source of 8% of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that’s catastrophically warming the planet. But how do we replace a material that’s so inexpensive, so durable and so popular?

Prometheus Materials has an intriguing answer. The University of Colorado spinout is turning algae into cement using a process that’s similar to how coral and seashells naturally form. “Climate change is potentially an existential problem, and we’re finding that nature may have provided us with the keys to a solution,” says Loren Burnett, the company’s cofounder and CEO.

Prometheus is still in the early stages of commercialization with minimal revenue from a test facility in Longmont, Colorado, near Boulder. But it’s figured out the science and is now raising what Burnett expects will be between $15 million and $35 million in venture funding (plus additional project financing) to build a 35,000-square-foot factory to make at least a half-dozen different varieties of precast, bio-concrete products, including blocks, panels and pavers.

Burnett expects that the combination of the factory’s production and a licensing strategy that will allow it to sell its bio-based material in powdered form to producers worldwide will help it reach $75 million in revenue by 2027. “The key here is that we’ll leverage the large producers of cement and concrete using their production and distribution facilities,” he says.

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