Thoralf Gutierrez

We move faster to scale Direct Air Capture.

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

New podcast: Hard tech startups die because they don't iterate quickly enough. They are left building big plants with technology that isn't there yet.

I sat down with @HugoRauch_Tech on the New Wave podcast to discuss why DAC is an industrial certainty and how we're building for this massive market.

Coming from @tesla, I saw that the only real moat is your speed of iteration. At @SironaTechCDR, we apply software speed to Direct Air Capture. We're just under three years old and we're already building our 7th iteration. If you aren't shipping, you aren't learning.

A few of the tactical points we covered:

Massive market: Even if we reduce emissions by 75%, we'll need to compensate for a massive 10 billion tons of residual emissions. To get to net-zero, there is no way around it. It is inevitable.

Modular Execution: Most DAC companies build huge monolithic plants. We ship containers. By building modular units, we can iterate every six months instead of every six years.

Sorbent Agnostic: The best filter material for DAC hasn't been invented yet. We build hardware that is solid-sorbent-agnostic so we can improve our sorbent over time and even swap the filters without rebuilding the infrastructure.

Electron Arbitrage: We don’t fight data centers for power. Since CO2 is everywhere, we just go and find places where the energy is the cleanest and the cheapest.

Full conversation links in the replies.

The market demand is there and you'll see more big announcements coming from us here 👀

We’re done with DAC science experiments. We’ve already deployed our first commercial site. Now it’s just a game of industrial execution.

[Sirona Technologies @SironaTechCDR]

A surprising benefit of modular technology is that you can bring it to the conference 👀👀

[Wes @wmorrill3]

@thorgutierrez

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

@wmorrill3 Man, this goes so hard. Happy to see you still at it @wmorrill3. And Dan, what a superhero

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

@patrickc Placebo effect (how does belief produces real physiological changes?)

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

I think this reflects our confused spiritual relationship with our own past. We feel a strong and intuitive affinity for what we used to build, while our contemporary frameworks consider such buildings misguided and "immoral". The mind says massing prohibitions and setbacks; the heart says beautiful masonry, higgeldy-piggeldy layouts, and Victorians. Rather than resolve the tension, we designate large fractions of our city ontologically confused, simultaneously protected and illegal; sanctified and condemned.

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

@HugoRauch_Tech Thanks, good questions. And lots of work still but we're only getting started.

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

New podcast: Hard tech startups die because they don't iterate quickly enough. They are left building big plants with technology that isn't there yet.

I sat down with @HugoRauch_Tech on the New Wave podcast to discuss why DAC is an industrial certainty and how we're building for this massive market.

Coming from @tesla, I saw that the only real moat is your speed of iteration. At @SironaTechCDR, we apply software speed to Direct Air Capture. We're just under three years old and we're already building our 7th iteration. If you aren't shipping, you aren't learning.

A few of the tactical points we covered:

Massive market: Even if we reduce emissions by 75%, we'll need to compensate for a massive 10 billion tons of residual emissions. To get to net-zero, there is no way around it. It is inevitable.

Modular Execution: Most DAC companies build huge monolithic plants. We ship containers. By building modular units, we can iterate every six months instead of every six years.

Sorbent Agnostic: The best filter material for DAC hasn't been invented yet. We build hardware that is solid-sorbent-agnostic so we can improve our sorbent over time and even swap the filters without rebuilding the infrastructure.

Electron Arbitrage: We don’t fight data centers for power. Since CO2 is everywhere, we just go and find places where the energy is the cleanest and the cheapest.

Full conversation links in the replies.

The market demand is there and you'll see more big announcements coming from us here 👀

We’re done with DAC science experiments. We’ve already deployed our first commercial site. Now it’s just a game of industrial execution.

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

Spotify: https://t.co/g13NaphKjW

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

Youtube: https://t.co/IztL9ICXGw

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

Flying from Paris to Calgary, Canada. Both are similar latitude. Leaving at 14:40, landing at 14:55. I'm essentially jumping really high while the Earth rotates under me?

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

@grok @patrickc @grok what about synthwave?

[Sirona Technologies @SironaTechCDR]

It's time to look back at 2025, and we're super proud of what the team accomplished:

✅ Launched our pilot plant in Kenya
→ from company inception to deployment in 22 months
→ making us the fastest DAC company to deploy a pilot plant

✅ Built our first commercial DAC machine
→ from drawing to first run in 6 months

✅ Started operations at Project Moringa
→ from company inception to deployment in 34 months
→ making us the fastest DAC company to deploy a commercial plant

✅ Reduced CAPEX by 4x
✅ Reduced sorbent costs by 3x

✅ Closed multi-year offtakes with leading buyers
→ future announcements coming soon 👀
→ we’re now sold out in 2026

We now shift our focus from deployment to delivery, with our first certified tons coming soon 💥

Thanks to everyone following, supporting, and challenging us along the way!

Happy holidays! 💫

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

@CJHandmer Reading Leslie Groves now and loving it

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

@tobi I love the analogy of the laptop being like your room. So what is the house equivalent of Raycast?

[Sirona Technologies @SironaTechCDR]

Master Plan, Chapter 4: Modular technology deployed to scalable plants

Most industries scale by building ever-larger plants on-site. We’re taking a different path.

We build modular, plug-and-play DAC units, then deploy many of them side by side to reach scale.

→ Each unit is container-sized and made from off-the-shelf components: lower cost, shorter lead times, agile supply chains.
→ Because each container is an independent unit, we can ship updates fast, and cut costs through continuous iteration.
→ Modules are shipped and installed with minimal on-site work. We can start small, derisk the technology and unlock project finance, then scale plants as large as needed.

How we build matters.

Read Chapter 4 of our Master Plan → https://t.co/2Zv2lRqF7f

[Sirona Technologies @SironaTechCDR]

Master Plan, Chapter 3: Sorbent-agnostic to ride massive cost reductions

At the heart of DAC is the solid sorbent: the filter that captures CO₂. There are many ways to build one (amines, zeolites, MOFs), each with their own trade-offs.

At Sirona, we develop and tune our own sorbents across multiple classes, improving stability, capacity, and regeneration efficiency. But instead of locking ourselves into one chemistry, our machines stay sorbent-agnostic: they can run a wide range of materials, and we can swap in better ones as we improve our sorbent.

That flexibility lets us move faster, integrating each new generation of sorbent as we develop it, without redesigning the whole system.

We already reduced our sorbent cost by 3x over the last 12 months and see more coming down the line. R&D is moving fast, and our hardware is built to keep up.

Read the third chapter of our Master Plan → https://t.co/ATUB0g5CFK

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

@pmarca People know he works hard from stories of him sleeping in the factory, and nobody wants to hear they must work harder.

[Thoralf Gutierrez @thorgutierrez]

Just realized that driving is the only activity where I use my feet as real tools.

I can think of other ways feet are used: as a modifier key for the piano, to dispense water on some water taps, to open some garbage bins. Soccer is an interesting use case.

Feels like this modality is underused though. Feels like there should be plenty of interesting use cases for computers as well, probably as a modifier key, maybe for CAD design or at least gaming...

Where are the people working on this??

cc @waitbutwhy