NuMat Technologies, a nanomaterials startup company founded at Northwestern, has just raised a $12.4 million series B round of funding from multiple strategic investors, led by OS Fund, with participation by Osage University Partners, Tin Shed Ventures (Patagonia’s strategic investment arm), and other existing NuMat investors.
“This group of investors is a perfect fit for NuMat. They’re an intelligent group of people who are investing ‘smart money,’” said Omar Farha, co-founder and President of NuMat and associate professor of chemistry at Northwestern.
NuMat is the first company in the world to commercialize products enabled by an innovative class of nanomaterials known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The materials’ porous, crystalline structures and extremely high internal surface areas make them ideal for attracting and storing gas molecules, which tend to “stick” to surfaces. Different types, sizes, and shapes of MOFs can be constructed according to specific dimensions of different types of gas molecules.
Utilizing highly customizable MOFs has many benefits over traditional methods of gas separation, compression, and storage, which are incredibly energy intensive and costly. Using sealed canisters filled with MOFs also allows gases to be stored sub-atmospherically, which is much safer than conventional high-pressure compression techniques.
With the funding announcement, the company stated that it will be able to expand its capabilities and increase its manufacturing footprint in the United States, Europe, and East Asia. “This round of funding is going to take many of our current projects to the finish line, and it will allow us to explore new initiatives and products in the coming years,” Farha said. “We’re going to be working on entirely new kinds of gas storage and separation technologies.”
NuMat has raised approximately $20 million in funding since launching in 2013. Just last week, Clean Energy Trust, a Chicago-based non-profit and one of the company’s original seed investors, awarded NuMat an additional $250,000, doubling down on its previous investments in 2012 and 2015. The company has won other funding awards including at the University of Texas at Austin’s Global Venture Labs Investment Competition, Rice Business Plan Competition, and US Department of Energy’s National Clean Technology Business Plan Competition.
Originally comprised of Farha and three Northwestern graduate students, the NuMat team has grown substantially since its inception. Co-founder Ben Hernandez (McC ’06 and KSM/Law ’13) is the CEO of NuMat. Farha credits much the company’s current success to its leadership and ongoing relationship with Northwestern.
“NuMat would not be where it is today without the ecosystem that surrounds it. This includes support we’ve received from ISEN [the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern], IIN [the International Institute of Nanotechnology], and Northwestern University more broadly. NuMat is located just 20 minutes away from the Evanston campus [in Skokie, Illinois]. Having access to second-to-none facilities and instrumentation at Northwestern has helped us immeasurably,” said Farha.
As Farha explained, the benefits of being affiliated with the University go well beyond the buildings and equipment: “Many of our employees graduated or are postdoc fellows from Northwestern, which is churning out top-notch chemists, engineers, and material scientists… Our own CEO Ben Hernandez is a Northwestern graduate and a remarkable and fearless leader. He can explain the technology inside and out and, like me, genuinely believes in what we’re doing. That makes a big difference.”
The $12.4 million in funding comes on the coattails of several recent milestones for NuMat, including the commissioning of an ISO9001 certified production line, located in Skokie, Illinois, dedicated to the assembly of MOF-enabled storage system for global export; and an ION-X® gas fill plant in Sihwa, South Korea, in partnership with Versum, a global leader in the specialty chemicals industry.
