Old shipping boxes go into a Buffalo plant. Carbon-storing insulation comes out. He runs the machine that closes the loop.
Sami Rahman has spent two decades working his way through the anatomy of a building. He helped sell the fiber cement siding that wraps a house at James Hardie. He ran the coatings and roofing business that sits on top at ICP Group, as Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Specialty Coatings unit. In January 2025 he walked into CleanFiber to take on the last layer left: the insulation packed inside the walls.
The throughline is not nostalgia for building materials. It is a chemical and environmental engineer's habit of asking what a product is actually made of, and whether it could be made better and cheaper at the same time. At CleanFiber, the answer arrives in the form of corrugated cardboard.
He joined as President and General Manager. Within months the board elevated him to Chief Executive Officer, after he tightened the company's sales engine and its operations during a delicate stretch. CleanFiber is not a science project. It is a manufacturer ramping a plant, and Rahman is the kind of leader hired to make plants run.
CleanFiber's pitch is almost suspiciously circular. The fiber that goes into its high-performance cellulose insulation comes from recycled corrugated cardboard, not the diminishing newsprint the cellulose industry historically depended on. The result is low-dust, all-borate, fire-safety certified to ASTM-C739, and engineered to be affordable.
Recycled corrugated boxes arrive as a clean, abundant fiber source.
A wet process floats off contaminants for a consistent, low-contamination feedstock.
An all-borate formulation adds fire retardancy and low-dust handling.
Premium insulation ships from Buffalo, built to blow in low-dust and low-clog.
CleanFiber's capital story reads like a company that kept proving it could ship. From a $10M round in 2022 to a $28M Series B in 2024 and a Series C close near $40M in 2025, investors kept funding the ramp. Rahman inherited the operator's half of that story: turning capital into capacity.
Approximate disclosed round sizes by year. Figures from public reporting; not audited financials.
CleanFiber calls its team hungry, loyal, and fun. It is installers, engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs who, by their own admission, like being the underdog.
Dual degrees. The reason he can argue about a borate formulation and a balance sheet in the same meeting.
University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The commercial half of an operator who started in the lab.
Rahman stepped in during a transition. Founder Jon Strimling left the CEO seat after 12 years, board chair Eric Chapman served as interim CEO, and Rahman ran day-to-day operations before taking the top job. He did not displace a founder so much as carry a baton handed to a new generation of the company.