This company rocks. Or rather, breaks rocks.
The Somerville startup Eden is developing new technology to replace traditional hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, which uses high-pressure water injection to break apart underground rock to extract natural gas and oil.
Paris Smalls, Eden’s co-founder and CEO, told BostInno that the startup’s electrical reservoir stimulation technology breaks up rocks using electrical pulses, which can save water, reduce CO2 emissions and eliminate contamination and waste compared to fracking.
Eden is looking ahead to a big 2024, Smalls said, including fulfilling some early contracts with companies and raising a Series A. To prepare for these goals, Tuesday morning Eden announced an oversubscribed $12M seed funding round.
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Smalls said this funding would be used to develop the company’s new laboratory in Somerville, build Eden’s equipment to deploy in the field and test the technology across a variety of geological locations.
“Then hopefully we can effectively de-risk the technology. Early next year we’ll be ready to start raising our Series A. I think we’re going to go pretty quickly here,” Smalls said.
The chief executive said Eden has already completed paid pilots, but wanted to raise additional capital when they began securing initial contracts.
“We thought it’d be a good idea to raise some capital, invest it into these contracts and these projects so that way when we did a good job with these contracts it can lead to much bigger contracts with the same companies,” Small said.
More startups entering geothermal sector
Smalls co-founded Eden in 2017 with his MIT classmate Ammar Alali. Smalls recently completed his Ph.D. in a MIT/WHOI joint program. At first, Smalls said Eden was focused on geothermal applications. As they moved along developing the technology, they discovered it could have broader applications. Eden started taking on projects in industries like mining, carbon sequestration and geologic hydrogen.
“What we’ve noticed is all of these applications require you to be able to better fracture the rock on the ground to increase the recovery of Earth’s natural resources,” Smalls said. “Heat or minerals or hydrogen, whatever it might be, you need to be able to create fractures to be able to pull it up.”
Smalls said more startups have been entering the geothermal space in the last two years, but not many have a novel rock fracturing technology. By better fracturing rocks, Smalls said they help customers increase their revenue by bringing up more heat from reservoirs.
Eden investors, grant funding
Eden says it has raised $21.3 million to date, including about $9.2 million in non-dilutive grants. This new funding round was led by TechEnergy Ventures and Helmerich & Payne Inc., a petroleum contract drilling company. Grantham Foundation for the Protection of The Environment, Anglo American, Good Growth Capital, MassVentures and the Portfolia Green & Sustainability Fund also contributed.
Smalls said about half of the investors were strategic and the other half were financial investors.
“We brought in people this round who can help us develop the technology and partner with us as we scale and grow,” Smalls said.
The company has about 25 employees. Most are in the Boston area, but Eden also has an office in Houston and a few people in Saudi Arabia. Smalls said they’ll hire about five more people and won’t grow again until their Series A.
