UniSieve

Developing porous-crystal/polymer membranes for energy-efficient molecular separation in industrial CO₂ capture and hydrocarbons.

Website: https://unisieve.com/

Cover Block

Open sources

Field	Value
Company	UniSieve
Tagline	Developing porous-crystal/polymer membranes for energy-efficient molecular separation in industrial CO₂ capture and hydrocarbons.
Headquarters	Zürich, Switzerland
Founded	2018
Stage	Series A
Business model	B2B
Industry	Cleantech / Climatetech
Technology type	Hardware
Geography	Western Europe
Growth profile	Venture Scale
Founding team	Co-Founders (2), Samuel Hess and Elia Schneider
Funding label	$10M+
Total disclosed funding	~$25,000,000 [Tech Funding News, October 2026]

What an Investor Needs First

PUBLIC UniSieve develops porous-crystal/polymer membranes for industrial gas separation, with an initial focus on CO2 capture, and it merits investor attention because the company is already commercializing into heavy industry, reported revenue by April 2023, and added a new $9 million Series A in October 2026 to support broader deployment [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. The company was founded in Zürich in 2018 by ETH Zürich classmates Samuel Hess and Elia Schneider, a pairing that gives the story a technically grounded origin while keeping the team narrative relatively compact in the public record [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023].

The technical claim is straightforward: UniSieve combines zeolitic porous crystals with polymer membranes to separate molecules more selectively, with the commercial pitch centered on lowering the heat and energy burden of conventional separation processes in chemical and energy applications [Startupticker, April 2023] [Silicon Canals, March 2024]. That matters because separation is a large cost center in industrial processes, but the public evidence still points more clearly to pilot and early commercial validation than to scaled deployment metrics; TechCrunch reported more than 24 clients and existing revenue in April 2023, while later coverage emphasizes expansion rather than large disclosed plant rollouts [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, October 2026].

On team, Hess is publicly identified as co-founder and CEO, and Schneider as co-founder and CTO, with Lukas Weder of Wingman Ventures joining the board around the 2020 financing, which adds some investor oversight continuity across the company's funding history [Startupticker, November 2020] [Crunchbase]. The disclosed business model is B2B industrial equipment and systems sales, with membrane systems and add-on units sold to chemical and energy customers, and at least one public account of a pilot-led go-to-market motion before full-scale units [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, April 2023].

Funding is meaningful but not excessive for the problem set: $4.6 million in 2020, $5.5 million in seed financing in 2023, and $9 million in Series A financing in 2026, with total disclosed funding reaching $25 million according to Tech Funding News [Startupticker, November 2020] [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the main things to watch are whether UniSieve converts pilot activity into repeatable commercial deployments, whether it can broaden beyond early CO2 capture use cases into hydrocarbon separations with the same performance case, and whether customer count growth begins to translate into more concrete operating disclosure [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, October 2026].

Partially corroborated -- Relies primarily on TechCrunch, Startupticker, Tech Funding News, and company-adjacent public materials; funding history is partially corroborated across outlets, but product performance and commercial scale remain only partially independently verified.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Value
Stage	Series A
Business Model	B2B
Industry / Vertical	Cleantech / Climatetech
Technology Type	Hardware
Geography	Western Europe
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (2)
Funding	$10M+ total disclosed, approximately $25,000,000

Inside the Company

PUBLIC

UniSieve presents as a Zürich-based industrial climate technology company, founded in 2018 by ETH Zürich classmates Samuel Hess and Elia Schneider, with an operating focus on molecular separation for carbon capture and hydrocarbons [unisieve.com] [TechCrunch, April 2023]. Public materials describe the business in practical terms: it is building membrane systems for chemical and energy customers rather than a software layer or services-only offering [unisieve.com] [TechCrunch, April 2023].

The dated public record shows a company moving from laboratory formation into staged commercialization. TechCrunch tied the 2018 founding to the founders' time at ETH Zürich and reported that by April 2023 UniSieve had more than 24 clients and was already generating revenue, which matters because it places early commercial activity before the later Series A financing cycle [TechCrunch, April 2023]. The company website aligns with the core product description and Swiss base, while later coverage reported a $9 million Series A in October 2026 that brought disclosed funding to $25 million in total, suggesting a capital path built around pilot deployment and broader industrial rollout rather than a single step-up round [unisieve.com] [Tech Funding News, October 2026].

A few milestones are visible even from the limited public file. In November 2020, Startupticker reported a $4.6 million financing led by Wingman Ventures and linked that round to pilot production and industrial testing [Startupticker, November 2020]. In April 2023, TechCrunch reported a $5.5 million seed round and confirmed existing revenue and client count [TechCrunch, April 2023]. By October 2026, Tech Funding News reported the Orano Venture Fund-led Series A, with cumulative funding at $25 million [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. Taken together, the chronology supports a reading of UniSieve as a Switzerland-based hardware startup that has spent several years translating membrane science into customer pilots and early commercial sales, although the legal entity details are not established in the permitted source set.

Partially corroborated -- Founded date, headquarters, founders, and commercialization milestones are supported by the company website and TechCrunch, with later financing corroborated by Tech Funding News.

Under the Hood

MIXED

The core product is a membrane-based gas separation system aimed at industrial molecular separation, with the first commercial wedge in CO₂ capture and a secondary application set in hydrocarbon separation [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023]. Public descriptions are directionally consistent across coverage: UniSieve says it develops porous-crystal/polymer membranes, combining zeolitic porous crystals with polymeric membranes to selectively separate molecules while reducing the heat demand associated with conventional thermal separation processes [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Silicon Canals, March 2024] [unisieve.com].

What matters here is not software abstraction but process hardware. The company presents itself as selling membrane systems and add-on units to industrial customers, and third-party coverage ties those systems to chemical and energy use cases where energy intensity and emissions are material operating costs [Silicon Canals, March 2024] [unisieve.com]. A narrower use case has also surfaced in industry-adjacent public posts: membranes designed for CO₂ capture in cement plants, where dusty flue gas and space constraints complicate deployment, though that claim is less directly corroborated than the broader carbon-capture positioning [Slawomir Wojcik Ph.D. - InnoCore Consulting | LinkedIn].

The commercial form factor appears to be pilot-led rather than immediate plantwide replacement. TechCrunch reported in April 2023 that UniSieve was already generating revenue and piloting both CO₂ capture and hydrocarbon-separation applications, while Startupticker described a model of on-site pilots followed by full-scale separation units [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, April 2023]. That sequencing is typical for industrial process adoption, but the public record still says more about technical promise and early deployment motion than about long-duration operating data, replacement cycles, or unit economics at scale [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, October 2026].

Partially corroborated -- Product scope is corroborated across TechCrunch, Tech Funding News, Silicon Canals, and the company website, but some application-specific claims and the pilot-to-full-scale deployment model rely on thinner or company-adjacent sourcing.

Market Research

Market backdrop

PUBLIC The market matters now because industrial decarbonization is moving from broad pledges to plant-level equipment decisions, and UniSieve sits in a part of that stack where energy savings can determine whether adoption clears the budget hurdle at all [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, April 2023].

Public reporting on UniSieve does not provide a cited TAM, SAM, or SOM for its addressable market, so the cleaner approach is to anchor on the end markets its product is explicitly targeting: industrial CO2 capture and hydrocarbon separation in chemical and energy settings [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023]. Those are not niche use cases. They sit inside established separation processes where conventional thermal methods are often energy intensive, which is the operating constraint UniSieve's membrane approach is trying to address [TechCrunch, April 2023] [unisieve.com].

The available reporting also points to a commercialization path shaped less by greenfield demand than by retrofit economics. Startupticker said in April 2023 that UniSieve had completed pilot tests and was pursuing additional membrane pilots and signed contracts, while TechCrunch reported more than 24 clients and existing revenue that same month [Startupticker, April 2023] [TechCrunch, April 2023]. That does not size the market, but it does suggest buyers are already willing to test alternatives to incumbent separation equipment when the value proposition is framed around lower heat load, lower energy use, and emissions reduction [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023].

Market lens	Public evidence	Read-through for UniSieve
Core application market	Industrial CO2 capture is identified as UniSieve's initial application [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023]	Demand depends on decarbonization spending by heavy industry, especially plants where capture economics are constrained by energy cost
Adjacent process market	Hydrocarbon separation is cited as a further application area [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023]	Opens a second budget line tied to product recovery and process efficiency, not only compliance
Customer segment	Chemical and energy companies are described as target buyers [Tech Funding News, April 2023] [LinkedIn]	Suggests enterprise industrial sales cycles, pilot-led qualification, and plant-specific deployment requirements
Delivery model	On-site pilots followed by full-scale units were reported in 2023 [Startupticker, April 2023]	Implies the early obtainable market is the subset of facilities willing to run demonstrations before broader rollouts

The practical takeaway is that UniSieve appears to be selling into existing industrial capex and opex budgets rather than trying to create an entirely new category. That usually makes the market slower to open, but easier to validate customer by customer when energy and throughput gains are measurable.

Demand drivers and adjacent markets

PUBLIC The demand drivers visible in the public record are energy efficiency, emissions pressure, and process economics, in that order.

TechCrunch and Tech Funding News both describe UniSieve's membranes as a lower-energy alternative to conventional separation processes in heavy industry, with the initial wedge in CO2 capture and later use in hydrocarbon separations [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023]. That distinction matters. A technology sold purely on carbon virtue can struggle when industrial budgets tighten, while a technology sold on heat and energy savings has a clearer operating-cost argument even before carbon pricing or incentives are counted.

The adjacent markets are also relevant because they broaden the reasons a plant operator might engage. UniSieve's public materials and coverage refer not only to carbon capture but also to hydrocarbon separation and gas purification more broadly [unisieve.com] [TechCrunch, April 2023]. If that application breadth holds in practice, the company's addressable spend is tied to a wider class of molecular separation steps across chemicals and energy, not a single policy-defined carbon market.

There is also early evidence that the company is positioning around hard-to-serve industrial environments rather than laboratory-grade conditions. LinkedIn-sourced commentary tied to the cement sector describes membrane designs for dusty flue gas and space-constrained plants, and Silicon Canals reported participation in the Fundación Repsol accelerator with an on-site pilot planned at a Repsol plant [Silicon Canals, March 2024] [Slawomir Wojcik Ph.D. - InnoCore Consulting | LinkedIn]. Those references are not broad market proof, but they do indicate where management sees practical demand emerging first: sites where conventional systems are costly, bulky, or difficult to integrate.

Regulatory and macro context

PUBLIC The macro case rests on industrial decarbonization becoming a balance-sheet issue, not simply an ESG talking point.

The cited coverage repeatedly frames UniSieve around heavy-emitting industries, customer-site pilots, and broader commercial deployment, which places it in the current wave of climate infrastructure aimed at existing industrial assets rather than voluntary offsets or consumer demand [Startupticker, April 2023] [Startupticker, October 2026] [Silicon Canals, March 2024]. Funding support connected to the European Innovation Council's Green Deal program and EIT Climate-KIC in the 2020 financing round also points to a policy environment in Europe that is willing to subsidize earlier validation of industrial decarbonization technologies [Startupticker, November 2020].

That said, the public evidence supports a measured rather than expansive market read. There is no third-party market study in the source set quantifying how much of the carbon-capture or gas-separation spend is realistically available to membrane systems in the near term. The conservative inference is that adoption will depend on site-specific retrofit feasibility, proof that membranes can maintain performance in messy operating conditions, and a payback period that competes with incumbent thermal processes and other capture approaches [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, April 2023].

For investors, the market question is less whether industrial separation is large, it plainly is, and more whether membrane-based substitution can move from pilots to standardized procurement. The public record shows enough customer activity to treat the demand signal as real, but not enough disclosed deployment detail to conclude the category has crossed that threshold yet [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, October 2026].

Partially corroborated -- Market direction is supported by TechCrunch, Tech Funding News, Startupticker, Silicon Canals, and company materials, but no independent third-party market sizing report is present in the cited public sources.

Competition and Substitutes

MIXED UniSieve appears to sit in a difficult but interesting middle ground: it is not competing with generic carbon-accounting software or project developers, but with the installed economics of thermal separation and with any decarbonization technology that can win budget inside chemical and energy plants [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, October 2026].

The first competitive line is the incumbent process stack. UniSieve's own positioning is explicit that its membranes are meant to replace or reduce the heat load of conventional molecular separation steps, initially in industrial CO2 capture and then in hydrocarbon separation [TechCrunch, April 2023] [unisieve.com]. In practice, that means the company is often selling against status-quo plant equipment and operating routines rather than against another venture-backed membrane startup named in the public record here. That matters because the real benchmark is not novelty, it is whether a plant operator can get acceptable purity, uptime, footprint, and retrofit complexity at a lower energy cost than incumbent separation methods [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, October 2026].

The second line is adjacent substitutes. For cement, chemicals, and refining, management attention and capex can also flow to other decarbonization pathways, including process optimization, electrification, carbon capture systems built on more established absorbent-based approaches, and broader plant-efficiency projects. The public sources do not name those rivals one by one, so the cleaner reading is narrower: UniSieve is competing for a place in industrial decarbonization budgets where proof of deployment speed and operating reliability carry more weight than lab novelty [Silicon Canals, March 2024] [Startupticker, April 2023]. Its edge today is therefore less about category ownership than about offering a modular membrane system and add-on units that can be piloted on site, which lowers the adoption threshold relative to full process redesigns [Startupticker, April 2023] [unisieve.com].

Where UniSieve seems strongest, on the public evidence, is in technical positioning plus early commercial validation. The company has described a membrane architecture that combines zeolitic porous crystals with polymeric membranes, and by April 2023 TechCrunch reported more than 24 clients and existing revenue, which is a meaningful signal for a hardware-heavy industrial startup at seed stage [TechCrunch, April 2023]. That edge could endure if customer switching costs rise after pilot conversion, particularly where retrofit constraints such as dusty flue gas, limited space, or energy intensity make membrane-based alternatives attractive [Slawomir Wojcik Ph.D. - InnoCore Consulting | LinkedIn] [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. It is still a perishable advantage, though, because the public record does not yet show category-defining scale, exclusive channels, or regulatory moats that would keep larger process-equipment vendors from responding if membrane adoption starts to clear procurement hurdles.

The main exposure is also clear. UniSieve does not appear, from the available public sources, to control a dominant distribution channel into heavy industry, and its commercial model still depends on pilots converting into broader deployment [Startupticker, April 2023]. That leaves it vulnerable to two kinds of competitor, even if unnamed here: incumbent industrial suppliers with established plant relationships, and better-capitalized carbon-capture platforms that can bundle financing, engineering, and service around the core technology. Over the next 18 months, the most plausible competitive scenario is that the winner is the class of suppliers that can turn pilot evidence into repeatable plant-level rollouts. If that happens, UniSieve could be among the relative winners if its membrane systems keep showing energy and space advantages in constrained industrial settings [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Silicon Canals, March 2024]. The relative loser, if customer procurement shifts toward turnkey multi-service offerings instead of component-level adoption, would be specialist membrane vendors without a broader integration layer, a group that could include UniSieve if commercialization stays pilot-heavy rather than fleet-like [Startupticker, October 2026] [Tech Funding News, October 2026].

Opportunity

PUBLIC The prize here is not a marginal efficiency tool but a chance to become a meaningful membrane-platform supplier into industrial gas separation, a market where even modest process gains can matter because the incumbent alternative is heat-intensive, plant-level infrastructure [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, October 2026].

The headline opportunity is straightforward. If UniSieve can move from pilots and early commercial contracts into repeatable deployment, it could become a specialist infrastructure vendor for hard-to-abate industrial separation steps, starting with CO₂ capture and extending into hydrocarbon purification [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. That outcome is reachable, not merely aspirational, because the public record already shows a few ingredients that usually arrive later in deeptech commercialization: more than 24 clients by April 2023, revenue already in place at that point, and multiple financings that appear tied to scale-up rather than pure lab work [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, November 2020] [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. The evidence does not yet show category leadership, but it does show a company that had moved beyond pre-revenue science and into customer-backed industrial testing unusually early for hardware-led climatetech [TechCrunch, April 2023].

A second reason the upside is real is that the initial wedge appears narrow enough to sell and broad enough to expand. Public materials consistently anchor the product in energy-efficient molecular separation, with the first use case in industrial CO₂ capture and additional applications in hydrocarbon separation [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. That matters because industrial buyers often adopt process technology one use case at a time, then standardize around vendors that can solve adjacent separations inside the same plant network. UniSieve's model of on-site pilots followed by full-scale units, as reported in 2023 coverage, fits that pattern [Startupticker, April 2023].

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst	Why it's plausible
Cement and heavy-industry wedge	UniSieve becomes a go-to membrane vendor for constrained industrial CO₂ capture projects, especially where heat load and footprint make conventional approaches harder to install	A successful reference deployment in a heavy-emitting plant, followed by repeat orders from similar sites	The company has publicly positioned CO₂ capture as its first application, and third-party references point to cement-plant relevance, including constraints such as dusty flue gas and limited space [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Slawomir Wojcik Ph.D. - InnoCore Consulting
Hydrocarbon separation platform	The company uses early CO₂ deployments to win hydrocarbon purification workloads, turning one membrane chemistry platform into multiple revenue lines	Conference validation or customer proof points in propylene or related hydrocarbon separations	TechCrunch reported pilots in hydrocarbon separation by April 2023, and Samuel Hess has been publicly associated with presenting the technology for propylene purification [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Mario Stucki - dimpora
Strategic channel scale-up	UniSieve grows through industrial and strategic partners rather than only direct sales, becoming embedded in decarbonization and process-upgrade programs	Accelerator or investor relationships convert into procurement access and plant pilots	The company was selected for Fundación Repsol's accelerator, and its Series A was led by Orano Venture Fund, with the round framed around broader commercial deployment [Silicon Canals, March 2024] [Tech Funding News, October 2026]

What compounding looks like, if this works, is less about classic network effects and more about industrial reference effects. Each successful pilot can lower adoption friction for the next one because the buyer objection in process industries is usually not product awareness but performance risk at the plant level [Startupticker, April 2023]. A membrane vendor that proves separation performance, durability, and integration in one difficult environment can often reuse that credibility across adjacent sites and molecules, especially when the core claim is lower energy intensity than thermal separation [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023]. The public signs of that flywheel are early but visible: customer count above 24 by April 2023, revenue already started, completed pilots reported in startup coverage, and financing rounds that supported production expansion and broader deployment rather than basic discovery alone [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Startupticker, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, October 2026].

The size of the win is harder to anchor precisely because the provided source set does not include a named market-sizing report or a clean public comparable with directly cited market value. Still, the framing can be made concrete. If UniSieve were to become a recognized specialist supplier for industrial membrane separation across CO₂ capture and hydrocarbons, the outcome could plausibly support a venture-scale infrastructure business with strategic value to large energy, chemicals, or nuclear-linked industrial groups already visible around the cap table [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. On the evidence available, a reasonable public-side interpretation is that success would look like a scaled process-technology company rather than a single-product pilot vendor, and that could justify a meaningfully larger enterprise than its current disclosed funding base of $25 million suggests (scenario, not a forecast) [Tech Funding News, October 2026]. The key point is not a precise valuation claim, which the public record here does not support, but that the commercial surface area expands materially if one membrane platform can sell into several separation problems inside the same industrial buyer set [TechCrunch, April 2023] [Tech Funding News, April 2023].

Partially corroborated -- This section relies primarily on TechCrunch, Startupticker, Tech Funding News, and Silicon Canals, with some product-application detail supported by LinkedIn references that are only partially corroborated.

Sources