Spiritus is a carbon removal company building scalable, low-cost direct air capture (DAC) technology designed to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere at a fraction of the cost of existing approaches. Spun out of Los Alamos National Laboratory and emerging from stealth in September 2023, the company is targeting a roughly 90% reduction in cost, aiming to deliver durable carbon removal at under $100 per ton - the threshold many experts consider necessary for DAC to scale to climate-relevant volumes.
The company's core innovation lies in its passive 'Carbon Orchard' approach and proprietary sorbent materials. Spiritus says it can produce its sorbent for under $10 per kilogram, around 90% cheaper than comparable alternatives, and operate its modular, low-temperature capture systems using less than one megawatt-hour of energy per ton of CO2 removed. By minimizing both energy intensity and capital expenditure, Spiritus seeks to make carbon removal economically viable for the large-scale deployments that climate goals require. The company is also developing 'Orchard Power,' a product intended to deliver life-cycle net-zero power at a price comparable to solar and batteries by leveraging waste heat.
Spiritus already counts leading carbon-removal buyers among its customers, including Frontier, Shopify, and Stripe, reflecting strong demand for high-quality, durable removal credits. Its flagship project, Orchard One in Wyoming, is designed as the first full-scale Carbon Orchard intended to sequester up to two megatons of CO2 annually, positioning it among the highest-capacity single-site DAC and storage facilities planned in the United States.
Founded in 2022 by CEO Charles Cadieu - previously founder of Caption Health and IQ Engines - and CTO Matt Lee, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory group leader, Spiritus combines deep-tech materials science with commercial entrepreneurship. In March 2025 the company raised a $30 million Series A led by Aramco Ventures, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, and TDK Ventures, bringing its total capital raised to roughly $41 million to advance its technology and scale deployment.