Most buildings do not disappear when they are demolished.
They leave something behind.
Broken concrete. Crushed stone. Leftover materials from construction, mining, and heavy industry. Most of it is treated as waste, hauled away and forgotten.
Carbon dioxide has a similar problem.
We know it is there. We know there is too much of it. But removing it in a way that actually makes economic sense has been one of the hardest challenges in climate technology.
Carbonyx is looking at both problems differently.
The BC-based startup is asking a simple but powerful question:
What if industrial waste and captured carbon could become something useful?
That question is what first caught our attention.
And it is why we invested.
The problem with industrial waste
Every year, industries create enormous amounts of leftover material.
Construction sites produce broken concrete. Steel production creates slag. Mining creates tailings. These are not small side effects. They are part of how the modern world gets built.
The scale is hard to ignore. In Canada alone, construction, renovation, and demolition waste is estimated at roughly 4 million tonnes each year, according to a Government of Canada report citing Statistics Canada. And because waste is tracked differently across regions, the real number may be even higher.
Most of the time, these materials still need to be moved, stored, managed, or disposed of.
That comes with cost, space, transportation, and environmental impact.
At the same time, industries are also being asked to reduce emissions and clean up their supply chains. The pressure is growing, but the solutions are not always easy to adopt.
For many companies, the challenge is not that they do not care.
It is that they need solutions that fit into how industry actually works.
The problem with carbon removal
Carbon removal is one of the biggest challenges in climate technology.
The idea sounds simple: remove CO₂ from the atmosphere or from industrial emissions, then store it somewhere safe.
But in practice, it is expensive.
Many carbon removal companies rely heavily on carbon credits as their main source of revenue. Those credits can help fund climate solutions, but they also create uncertainty.
Prices can change. Demand can shift. Verification can be complicated. Policy support can move slowly.
That makes it difficult to build a business that can scale only because someone is willing to pay for the carbon removal itself.
This is the part Carbonyx is trying to rethink.
Instead of asking only, “Who will pay us to remove carbon?”
They are asking:
Can carbon removal also create something industry already needs?
What Carbonyx actually does
Carbonyx is developing technology that works with industrial byproducts like waste concrete, steel slag, and mine tailings.
These materials already exist at massive scale.
Carbonyx uses electricity to help process these waste materials and react them with captured CO₂. Through this process, the carbon can become locked into a solid mineral form, similar to how carbon can naturally become stored in rock over time.
But Carbonyx is trying to do this faster, inside a controlled system.
The result is not just stored carbon.
The process can also create useful materials, including specialty silica and carbonates.
In simple terms, Carbonyx is working to turn industrial waste and carbon dioxide into valuable materials, while permanently storing carbon along the way.
That is the core idea.
Why silica matters
Silica may not sound exciting at first.
But it quietly supports a lot of modern life.
It can be used in tires, toothpaste, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, construction materials, rubber products, coatings, and industrial manufacturing.
In other words, this is not a material looking for a market.
The market already exists.
Today, silica is often produced through traditional supply chains that can involve mining, energy-intensive processing, and long-distance transportation.
Carbonyx sees an opportunity to produce silica in a different way.
Because their process uses industrial waste as a starting point, the long-term vision is to produce useful materials closer to where customers need them.
That could help reduce transportation costs, lower emissions, and create a more circular supply chain.
For customers, the value is straightforward:
They still get a material they already use.
But over time, it could come from a cleaner, more local, and more resilient source.
Why the technology is different
Carbon can be stored through a process called mineralization.
This happens when CO₂ reacts with certain minerals and becomes locked into a stable solid form. Nature already does this, but slowly.
Carbonyx is working to speed up that process in a controlled and repeatable way.
The science matters, but the bigger idea is easier to understand:
Carbonyx is trying to take two things we have too much of, industrial waste and carbon dioxide, and turn them into something useful.
That is what makes the technology more than a climate story.
It is also a materials story.
And for climate technology to scale, that matters.
A solution cannot only be technically impressive. It also needs to answer practical questions:
Can customers use the product?
Can it fit into existing supply chains?
Can the economics work without relying only on carbon credits?
Can it be deployed where the waste already exists?
Those are the questions that matter when a technology starts moving from the lab into the real world.
Why this matters for industry matters
Industrial waste is not going away.
Construction, mining, steel, and manufacturing are essential parts of the economy. They help build the world around us, but they also create large waste streams and emissions.
At the same time, manufacturers are under more pressure to decarbonize their supply chains.
They need cleaner materials.
They need better ways to manage waste.
They need practical solutions that do not require them to completely rebuild how they operate overnight.
That is where Carbonyx becomes compelling.
The company sits at the intersection of carbon removal, industrial waste, sustainable materials, circular economy, and local supply chains.
This is not a consumer app or a nice-to-have product.
It is the kind of infrastructure-level innovation that could become more important as industries look for cleaner and more resilient ways to produce the materials they already use.
Built in British Columbia
Carbonyx comes out of deep technical research at the University of British Columbia, led by a team with strong experience in chemistry, electrochemistry, carbon capture, and engineering.
The company is led by Douglas Pimlott, a UBC PhD chemist whose work included electrochemical reactors and reactive carbon capture technology. He is joined by Mia Stankovic, Head of Operations, who brings deep expertise in water electrolysis and electrified fuel production, and Adrien Noble, Head of Engineering, who brings engineering experience from Tesla and BarrelWise Technologies.
Carbonyx is also advised by Dr. Curtis Berlinguette, a leading Canadian researcher in CO₂ capture and conversion, and co-founder of Carbon Engineering.
The team’s technical depth is clear.
But what stood out to us was not only the science.
It was how seriously they are thinking about commercialization. Customers. Cost structure. Supply chains. Product demand. The steps required to move from the lab into real industrial use.
That balance matters.
Especially in deeptech, where the strongest companies need both technical excellence and a practical path to market.
Why Cindicates Invested
At Cindicates, we look for early-stage companies with strong fundamentals, thoughtful execution, and the potential to create meaningful value.
Carbonyx stood out because it brings together several things we care about.
A large and urgent problem.
A strong technical team.
A clear industrial use case.
A practical revenue opportunity through materials.
A climate solution that is not fully dependent on carbon credits.
And a BC-based company building in a globally relevant market.
What we like most is that Carbonyx is not treating carbon removal as a standalone cost.
They are trying to make it part of a real industrial value chain.
That is an important distinction.
If the world is going to scale climate solutions, those solutions need to work economically. They need to fit into real markets. They need to help customers solve problems they already have.
Carbonyx is still early, and like any deeptech company, there are important milestones ahead. The team will need to keep validating the technology, proving performance at larger scales, and building commercial partnerships.
But the direction is clear.
They are building toward a future where waste is not just waste, and carbon removal is not just a cost.
It can become part of how we make the materials industry already needs.
That is why we invested in Carbonyx.
And we are excited to support them as they continue building from British Columbia.