Carbon

Fugu's proposition is that Direct Air Capture will only reach gigaton scale through radical modularity — units small enough to manufacture at volume in a factory, deploy anywhere, and aggregate into large arrays. Their modular DAC units are designed to be fully self-contained, powered by co-located renewable energy, and deployable at locations where captured CO₂ can be sequestered nearby — such as above basalt formations suitable for mineralisation. The modularity also addresses the cost reduction challenge: learning curve effects are far more powerful in high-volume manufactured products than in custom-engineered large plants. Fugu takes inspiration from how solar panels achieved cost reductions through repetitive manufacturing, and applies that logic to carbon capture hardware. The company is early-stage but is part of a growing cluster of startups betting that modular, distributed DAC is the only path to the scale the climate problem demands.