44.01 takes strategic investment from Holcim to scale carbon mineralisation
The Omani startup has raised an undisclosed sum from the Swiss building materials group, extending a Fujairah cement pilot toward commercial deployment.
Omani climatetech company 44.01 has secured a strategic investment from Holcim, the Swiss building materials group, made through its corporate venture capital activity. The amount and the equity stake were both left undisclosed.
The capital is earmarked for commercial scaling and expansion outside Oman.
44.01 builds carbon mineralisation technology. Captured CO2 is injected into naturally reactive ultramafic rock formations, where it converts into stable carbonate minerals — carbon turned to rock and stored permanently rather than held in a reservoir. The geology does most of the work.
Talal Hassan, Ehab Tasfai and Karan Khimji started the company in 2020.
Holcim's cheque formalises a relationship already running in the field. Since July the two have operated a pilot at Holcim's Fujairah cement plant in the United Arab Emirates, under live industrial conditions, injecting CO2 underground and mineralising it into solid rock.
Ram Muthu, head of operational excellence at Holcim, said the investment extends the UAE project, which stores captured carbon in rock formations beside the plant. Where geology allows, he said, storage can sit close to the point of production. That matters for inland sites, where access to offshore storage may be limited, and the route supports decarbonisation under Holcim's NextGen Growth 2030 strategy.
44.01's earlier financing sets the scale. Equinor Ventures led a $37 million Series A in July 2024, with Shorooq Partners among the participants. The cap table also counts JERA, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Air Liquide Venture Capital and Siemens Financial Services.
For Holcim, the deal adds to a portfolio of digital and decarbonisation technologies held inside what the company describes as an open innovation ecosystem. It has now made 22 investments through Holcim MAQER Ventures, its corporate venture capital and open innovation unit, and says it works continuously to bring emerging technologies for the built environment to scale.
Cement is awkward to decarbonise because a large share of a plant's emissions comes from the limestone chemistry itself, which leaves operators with CO2 that has to go somewhere. Bringing the storage to the quarry, rather than the quarry to the storage, changes the logistics of that problem — if the rock beneath a plant is the right kind.
