Formerly known as Environmental Material Sciences (EMS), soil remediation platform LiORA has secured a $5.1 million CAD seed round to implement its go-to-market strategy in the United States.
The Calgary and Saskatoon-based company closed the all-equity round in January, which was led by Conexus Venture Capital Fund II as well as the BDC Capital’s Sustainability Venture Fund (SVF). The round also saw participation from PIC Investment Group, Golden Opportunities Fund, and WTC Investments. LiORA chairman Kerry Brown and CEO Steven Siciliano also participated in the round.
There were 24,109 contaminated sites across Canada as of March 2023, according to an Auditor General’s report.
In an interview with BetaKit, Siciliano called the raise a “significant up round” from LiORA’s previous $1.6 million pre-seed financing, and said the company also secured an additional $1.4 million in venture debt from RBCx. BDC SVF partner Anamika Mukherjee and Conexus Venture Capital principal Alex Shimla will join the company’s board as a result of the round, alongside independent director and Siemens veteran Jeff Dyck.
Siciliano is a professor of soil toxicology at the University of Saskatchewan and the Industrial Research Chair on the same topic. Siciliano explained in the interview that he decided that the industry needed new tools after working on soil remediation everywhere from Canada’s North to Antarctica. Through this academic work, he found himself working alongside oil and gas companies to develop that toolset.
As EMS, LiORA developed a sensor to analyze pollutants in contaminated soil, a platform to make sense of the captured data, and a nutrient mix called BioLodestone that breaks down hydrocarbons. The venture was spun out of the University of Saskatchewan in 2019, and now helps undisclosed “major international oil and gas companies” clean their contaminated sites throughout Canada and the US.
“These companies are all looking for more sustainable, more effective ways to reduce their financial liability,” Siciliano said.
Contaminated sites are locations like industrial facilities, such as oil refineries, transfer facilities, or old gas stations that contain substances that can pollute the surrounding environment, including soil. There were 24,109 contaminated sites across Canada as of March 2023, according to an Auditor General’s report. The report estimated that cleaning up the approximately 4,500 unmediated sites could cost more than $10 billion.
Siciliano said LiORA’s sensor autonomously tracks biological activity and pollution at the same time, with a battery life of just over two years. In combination with machine learning and other artificial intelligence tools to provide insights and reporting, Siciliano claimed LiORA helps stakeholders make decisions that can speed a contaminated site’s cleanup timeline from twenty years to five years.
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“The average company only normally works on 10 percent or less of its contaminated sites at any one time,” Siciliano claimed. “Our goal is to increase that to 100 [percent], by making it affordable and scalable.”
With approximately 30 employees on its team, LiORA has exceeded 70 percent revenue growth year-over-year. Siciliano hopes to use the new funding to bolster LiORA’s developer and software engineering teams. The company is also working on a next-generation sensor designed for salinity spills, which Siciliano said are ”much more toxic” to soil and more commonplace, to launch in the second quarter of 2026.
While the company already has multiple US contracts, Siciliano said that the main focus of its seed funding is proving out a scalable go-to-market motion across the US.
“It’s a major stepping stone for all Canadian startups: to prove that we can sell in that market,” Siciliano said.
With files from Josh Scott. Feature image courtesy Patrick Hendry via Unsplash.