Matteco, an advanced materials company with new solutions to decarbonize the economy and boost the competitiveness of renewable hydrogen, has closed a €15 million Series A investment round backed by a group of national and international family offices committed to impact investing, including Grupo ASV (Spain), Napali (Chile) and Zubi (Spain).
The capital raised will be used for the imminent opening and ramp-up of its next generation 10,000 sqm catalyst and electrode factory in Paterna (Valencia), which will enable Matteco to produce the equivalent of 1 gigawatt (GW) of electrodes per year.
The company, led by Iker Marcaide as CEO and co-founder, will increase its production capacity to meet the growing demand for integrating its next generation catalysts and electrodes with alkaline and AEM electrolyzer manufacturers worldwide. Matteco already has customers in Europe, North America and Asia.
The growth and scale-up of production will grow the current team from 30 to 100 in 2025. The funds will also contribute to further innovation and optimization of production processes to remain at the technological forefront of the clean technology sector and help build a competitive European industry leading the transition to a decarbonized economy
“Matteco represents a successful case of transferring scientific and technological breakthroughs from the laboratory to the market on an industrial scale”, commented Gonzalo Abellán, co-founder and CTO of Matteco. The company, a spin-off from the University of Valencia (UV), is the result of the joining of forces in August 2023 between Zubi Labs, the impact venture builder of the Zubi Group, and a group of scientists from the research developed at the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) of the UV by the team led by Gonzalo Abellán.
The closing of Series A and the joining of new investors just one year after its founding confirm the company’s high growth potential within the cleantech ecosystem.
Iker Marcaide, co-founder and CEO of Matteco: “We look forward to this new phase of growth and scaling up with partners who strongly believe in impact investing so that together we can harness the potential of materials innovation to solve the environmental challenges we face.”
Matteco is thus consolidating its global position as a manufacturer of high-performance materials for decarbonization. Its patented technology, built on more than 10 years of R&D, has a significant impact on the competitiveness of green hydrogen production. In this context, its novel platinum-free materials (PGMs) offer best-in-class performance for electrolyzers by enabling lower energy consumption, higher current densities and superior stability and durability, revolutionizing the efficient production of green hydrogen and addressing the global industry’s grand challenge: to significantly reduce the currently high production costs, both in terms of operations and equipment investment, to compete with and displace fossil fuels.