Tulum Energy, a methane pyrolysis startup, has announced the closure of a $27 million venture financing round. This significant investment, led by CDP Venture Capital (through its Green Transition Fund) and TDK Ventures and a global consortium of prominent investors including Tulum’s founder TechEnergy Ventures, MITO Technology, through the MITO Tech Ventures fund, and Doral Energy Tech Ventures, underscores strong confidence in Tulum Energy’s innovative approach to clean hydrogen production.
What Tulum Energy does: Tulum Energy is at the forefront of developing a revolutionary methane pyrolysis technology. Methane pyrolysis is a chemical process that produces clean (turquoise) hydrogen and solid carbon using natural gas or biogas as a feedstock, without CO2 emissions. Methane Pyrolysis can overcome the economic and infrastructural limitations of green and blue hydrogen in the industrial production of decarbonized hydrogen.
TechEnergy Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Tecpetrol, created Tulum Energy by collaborating with Tenova, a leader in industrial technology for electric arc furnaces and hydrogen-ready direct reduced iron (H2-ready DRIs), which are essential for steel decarbonization. Their partnership, formed in 2022, secured key intellectual property and resources to launch the business.
Tenova provides Tulum Energy with substantial industrial expertise and access to a well-established supply chain, while also supporting its commercial efforts through connections to a broad customer base.
As global hydrogen demand in industrial applications is expected to double over the coming decades, Tulum Energy aims to offer a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional hydrogen production methods.
How the funding will be used: The funds from this seed funding round will be used to build Tulum Energy’s pilot plant in Pesquería, Mexico, within Ternium’s industrial complex, a leading steel producer in the Americas.
Tulum Energy will also establish its Italian subsidiary in Milan, which will act as the central hub for research, development, and engineering for its pilot project and future commercial plants, leveraging the local manufacturing supply chain and talent.
KEY QUOTES:
“The distinguishing feature of our technology is its unmatched combination of high scalability and exceptional energy efficiency. This allows us to meet the substantial demands of large industrial consumers of hydrogen, such as refineries, ammonia producers, and chemical plants — at truly competitive costs, even without relying on tax credits and incentives.”
“The core innovation lies in the repurposing of existing, commercially available machinery from the steelmaking industry to produce turquoise hydrogen. We are essentially readapting an electric arc furnace as a high-temperature heat source to crack methane molecules, yielding clean hydrogen and valuable solid carbon, rather than smelting iron.”
“Ternium is the perfect partner to host our initial operations. They have an interest in utilizing our hydrogen for direct reduced iron (DRI) production, and they possess the robust infrastructure we need for seamless scaling.”
“Because we leverage existing components and an established supply chain from Tenova, our technological and commercial journey will be exceptionally time and capital-efficient. Following the Pilot, we will directly proceed to building our first full-scale commercial plant.”
Massimiliano Pieri, CEO of Tulum Energy
“Having a CVC with venture building capabilities allowed us to adopt an investor mindset from day one, enabling us to build a company that would be highly attractive for global investors from the get-go.”
Alejandro Solé, CIO of TechEnergy Ventures
“We started working with the concept of repurposing an electric arc furnace as a result of in-house experiments and our deep knowledge of EAF’s.”
Paolo Argenta, EVP of Tenova’s Upstream Business Unit
“Tulum Energy’s scalable and efficient methane pyrolysis technology is a game-changer for industrial decarbonization. Our investment fully reflects our mission and our commitment to innovative solutions that drive the green transition, across the hard-to-abate industrial sectors, where decarbonization remains particularly challenging, at national, European, and global levels. This initiative also recognizes the excellence of Italy’s specialized supply chain in the manufacturing sector, which plays a key role in the production of the component technology used for the construction of the pilot plant.”
Cristina Tomassini, Head of Green Transition Fund of CDP Venture Capital
“TDK Ventures is proud to back Tulum Energy. The company’s groundbreaking turquoise hydrogen process, built on an ingenious repurposing of mature industrial technology, offers a uniquely scalable and cost-effective pathway to decarbonize heavy industries which represent very large end markets. We are excited to leverage our global network to accelerate Tulum Energy’s technology development and commercialization and help the company become a cornerstone of the clean hydrogen economy.”
David Delfassy, Investment Director at TDK Ventures
