Immaterial raises £13.5 million to build more energy-efficient defence equipment
Immaterial closed a Series A2 round of £13.5 million, about $18.2 million. SLB led the investment alongside AP Ventures, Moeve, and Finindus. The Cambridge-based company plans to fund pilots in Europe and the United States and to bring its Cambridge manufacturing site online.
“We are delighted to have our existing investors continue with their commitment and demonstrate confidence in Immaterial and the team, and support us to scale a differentiated industrial solutions platform that delivers an economic transformation to our customers in hard to abate sectors,” said CEO Mohammed Khan.
Immaterial works with metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. They take these lab materials and turn them into solid blocks called monoliths, which can be used to capture carbon and other materials, kind of like a metallic filter. Their primary business idea is to make MOFs tough, compact, and ready for real hardware, not just research.
For defense, this matters in a few clear ways. Monolith MOFs can sit inside engines, generators, or vents and grab gases or water as they pass through. They can be used for carbon capture on diesel generators at bases, so units burn fuel but cut local emissions. They can store hydrogen in a smaller tank, which helps for vehicles, drones, or base power. They can also pull water from the air in dry places, to ease resupply and they can make HVAC systems in bunkers and command posts more efficient, so they use less fuel and produce less heat to detect.
Immaterial shapes MOFs into dense, stable blocks, then designs the flow system around them. This lets them cut size, cost, and running expense for gas and vapor handling. In defense terms, that means smaller equipment, lighter logistics, and longer run time at the edge.
The firm says it can produce MOFs in monolith form at density and stability suitable for industry while keeping storage performance high. Materials discovery uses what the company calls Wet-AI, a mix of digital design and green chemistry workflows, tied to machine learning for economic tuning of engineered solutions. A multi-tonne line in Cambridge is being commissioned to supply pilots at customer sites.
“It is a special moment for me to realise the next phase of Immaterial’s journey, from pure academic ideas to products that solve timely challenges such as climate change,” said Professor David Fairen-Jimenez, Chief Scientific Officer and founder.
The company frames the next phase as execution. It plans more pilots to grow their dataset and to show that monolithic MOFs can make decarbonization equipment smaller, cheaper, and easier to run.