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 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.
Alex Cooper is the co-founder and co-CEO of Pathways, a New York climate-AI company building the data layer for sustainable manufacturing. Pathways automates the creation of real-time Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for building-material producers - turning a slow, costly, manual six-to-twelve-month process into something that takes weeks. A decade scaling consumer and data startups (Uber, Clutter, Two Chairs) left Cooper convinced that the manufacturers responsible for roughly 40% of global CO2 deserved software as good as the apps on everyone's phone. He teamed up with Harvard classmate Leise Sandeman in 2022 to prove it.
Webcor is a San Francisco-based commercial general contractor and one of California's largest builders, known for self-performed concrete, finish carpentry and millwork, deep preconstruction and BIM expertise, and a portfolio of landmark projects from the California Academy of Sciences to the Salesforce Transit Center. Founded in 1971 and owned by Japan's Obayashi Corporation since 2007, Webcor pairs craft-trade self-performance with virtual-building technology to deliver complex, sustainable buildings across the state.