Halifax’s pHathom Technologies has secured $4 million CAD in seed funding to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ocean-based bioenergy facilities.
pHathom plans to use this capital to pilot its coastal carbon-capture technology in projects across Atlantic Canada. Those projects will ideally help the company refine and validate its approach to prepare it for wider deployment.
“This investment allows us to demonstrate a bioenergy carbon capture pathway that works within existing infrastructure.”
Founded in 2024, pHathom specializes in shore-based industrial carbon conversion. The company’s technology “bolts directly onto” existing coastal bioenergy plants, such as traditional power plants that produce CO2 when burning biomass like wood chips.
pHathom’s strategy involves capturing CO₂ before it reaches the atmosphere and using a slurry of limestone and seawater in its weathering reactor to convert it into bicarbonate, a compound that is already found in oceans, through a process that the startup claims “mimics the earth’s natural carbon cycle.” The company says that bicarbonate can be stored in the ocean, locking the associated carbon away without altering the acidity of seawater.
pHathom co-founder and CEO Kimberly Gilbert is an American expert in carbon chemistry. She launched pHathom with COO Andrew Ray (formerly of Innovacorp), who is located in Halifax.
Gilbert told BetaKit they landed on the city because it has become “a centre of excellence” for marine carbon dioxide removal and Atlantic Canada supports climate tech research and development.
“Prime Minister Carney wants Canada to be a clean energy superpower,” Gilbert said. “By capturing and durably storing carbon from biomass power plants on the coasts where geologic storage is more challenging than it is in Alberta or the Prairies, [pHathom] can be an important part of that story. Besides that, Canadians are really nice people. I can’t think of a better place to build a company.”
pHathom’s seed round, raised via simple agreement for future equity, was led by Boston’s Propeller Ventures, with support from provincial government-backed New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) and Invest Nova Scotia, as well as Belgian-based strategic investor Carmeuse Ventures. pHathom secured the $4-million across multiple closes, the latest of which was held in January.
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With this funding, pHathom claims it now has more than $12 million in committed capital. That figure includes funds the company expects to receive from the federal government thanks to its lead role in the Ocean Supercluster-backed Carbon Capture and Marine Storage Project, some funding from NorthX, and a prior, $250,000, NBIF-supported angel round.
pHathom, which is already working with sustainable biomass producers, carbon capture research institutions, and measurement, reporting, and verification experts to validate and scale its technology, hopes to deploy full-scale commercial projects by 2030. The 12-person cleantech company expects to add another 10 employees over the next two years.
Like fellow Nova Scotia startup Planetary Technologies, pHathom is also working with Shopify-backed carbon removal credit buyer Frontier. Last year, pHathom was selected for Frontier’s advance purchase program. Cleantech accelerator Foresight Canada also named pHathom startup of the year in its first Atlantic Canadian cleantech awards.
This seed capital unlocks two key projects for pHathom: a summer 2026 launch at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre aimed at verifying ocean safety for 13 marine species with independent data, and a large-scale industrial deployment in partnership with a community college in 2027 designed to demonstrate its carbon removal process at a commercial scale.
CORRECTION (02/13/26): An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that pHathom specialized in “marine-based carbon dioxide (CO₂) removal.” It has been updated to correctly state that the company specializes in “shore-based industrial carbon conversion.”
Feature image courtesy pHathom Technologies.