Aviation is a $200 billion annual market that remains almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels. While air travel demand continues to climb, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is the only viable path to decarbonization. To date, however, the cost of production has remained prohibitively high.

E-fuels—synthetic fuels produced from air, water, and renewable electricity—are chemically equivalent to conventional jet fuel. They work in existing engines and infrastructure without modification. The challenge is that capturing CO₂ from the atmosphere and producing green hydrogen is enormously expensive. Most e-fuel companies are essentially "price-takers": they purchase carbon and hydrogen as inputs from third parties, inheriting a cost stack that makes the resulting fuel uneconomical. As a result, e-fuel companies have struggled to achieve cost parity with fossil fuels.

We invested in Sora Fuel because they are the first team we have seen address the feedstock problem at a structural level.

Sora’s proprietary electrolyzer takes a CO₂-rich solution directly from an air contactor and converts it into syngas in a single integrated step. By bypassing the massive energy requirement that usually accounts for 90% of the cost and capital in conventional carbon capture, Sora has created what we believe is the only economically credible pathway from air to finished fuel.

While conventional direct air capture (DAC) costs between $500 and $800 per ton of CO₂, Sora’s approach delivers captured carbon at less than $50 per ton. This shifts the economics of e-fuels from a science experiment to a commercial product, with a path to sustainable aviation fuel at under $5 per gallon, unsubsidized.

The founding team is uniquely suited to this challenge. Co-founder and CEO Gareth Ross was previously an executive at MassMutual before becoming an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Engine Ventures. Co-founder and CSO Patrick Sarver holds a PhD in chemistry from Princeton and completed a postdoc in materials chemistry at MIT. Together, they combine Gareth’s experience operating at Fortune 100 scale with Patrick’s deep command of the electrochemistry underpinning Sora’s technology.

The market timing is equally critical. Regulatory mandates across Europe, Asia, and Australia now require airlines to blend increasing percentages of sustainable fuel, with steep penalties for non-compliance. Sora’s technology and unit economics have already generated partnership and offtake interest from leading global energy companies, airlines, and aviation OEMs. The industry is no longer just looking for "green" fuel; they are desperate for a synthetic solution that can actually scale without breaking their balance sheets.

As renewable energy costs continue to decline, Sora’s advantage only grows. We are thrilled to co-lead this $14.6M round and partner with Gareth, Patrick, and the Sora team to make affordable, sustainable aviation fuel a reality.

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