cement
(3)
Furno Materials
Furno Materials is a California cleantech company rebuilding how cement is made. Instead of the mile-long rotary kilns that make cement one of the dirtiest industries on earth - roughly 8% of global CO2 - Furno builds compact, modular vertical micro-kilns (the 'Furno Brick') that run at more than 80% thermal efficiency, roughly double a conventional plant. The kilns burn gas-based fuels, eliminate NOx and SOx emissions entirely, cut fossil-fuel emissions by at least 70%, and can reach zero emissions on hydrogen - all while producing standards-grade Ordinary Portland Cement at the point of demand.
Leise Sandeman
Leise Sandeman is the CEO and co-founder of Pathways, a climate-tech startup building the data layer for sustainable manufacturing. Pathways uses AI to automate the creation of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for building-material makers - concrete, steel, cement, glass - turning a months-long consultant slog into a process that takes weeks. A Copenhagen native and former McKinsey sustainability consultant who scaled a recycling venture before studying at Harvard and MIT, Leise co-founded Pathways in 2022 with Alex Cooper after meeting in an MIT entrepreneurship class. The company raised an oversubscribed $2.5M seed round in February 2024 and now serves manufacturers across hundreds of plants.
Gurinder Nagra
Gurinder Nagra is the founder and CEO of Furno Materials, a South San Francisco climate-tech company building the world's first modular, energy-efficient cement plant. Born in India, raised in rural Griffith, Australia, and trained as a geoscientist at UNSW and Stanford, he traded a boyhood cricket dream for a fight against cement's outsized carbon footprint. Furno's compact kilns use oxyfuel combustion to make ASTM-certified cement at lower cost and far lower emissions; in 2024 the company's cement tested at twice the ASTM strength standard, closed an oversubscribed $6.5M seed round, and Nagra landed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.