Meet 4 chemistry start-ups navigating uncertainty in the Trump era

 

Since January, the founders of chemistry start-ups have been trying to keep their balance as the ground has shifted beneath their feet.

The re-election of Donald J. Trump heralded sweeping changes to science and technology policy in the US. Major tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act for sustainable chemical technologies are on their way out. Hundreds of grants for clean technology projects are under review. US tariffs, and retaliatory tariffs on US goods, have shaken global supply chains. Amid all the change, private investors have become more cautious.

The Trump administration is prioritizing support for some areas of clean technology, like critical minerals. But as the government is easing the permitting process for certain mines, it’s simultaneously removing support for industries, such as electric vehicles, that use the minerals being extracted from the ground.

For many cleantech start-ups, the 30,000-foot view is bleak. But the impact of these changes is not spread evenly, and understanding their day-to-day impact requires a magnifying glass. In the following vignettes, leaders from four US chemistry start-ups explain how they are navigating uncertainty in the Trump era.

New Iridium

The Colorado-based start-up New Iridium has developed a technology that chemically converts bioethanol to acetic acid and ethyl acetate. The company says its oxidation approach is more efficient than fermentation and that the process achieves nearly equal the performance of converting fossil fuels to the chemicals, but with far fewer carbon emissions.

The company’s early R&D was supported by Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the US National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. The company wrapped up the initial DOE project in April and had hoped to apply for the second phase of the program.

Companies that successfully complete the first phase of an SBIR grant are usually invited to apply for the next round, says New Iridium’s chief operating officer, Brent Cutcliffe. But for several months, mass layoffs at federal scientific agencies have been throwing a wrench into those plans.

“Phase 2 is the big one,” he told C&EN in June. “But there’s been no information. There’s been absolutely no communication. We have made a number of attempts to inquire, and it’s just crickets.”

By late July, the company was finally invited to apply for that funding. But two larger DOE grant programs that could help the company scale up the technology remain on hold.

Over the past few years, says CEO Chern-Hooi Lim, government grants had helped New Iridium survive a period when venture capitalists were hesitant to invest in cleantech start-ups. As it became clear in early 2025 that Trump’s election would mean a pullback of government grants, the company kicked its private fundraising efforts into overdrive.

In June, New Iridium closed a $2.65 million seed funding round, which should give it enough cash to operate for 18–24 months. Over that time, Lim hopes to begin operating a pilot-scale plant that will allow the company to start delivering samples to potential customers.

Lim and Cutcliffe argue that the reduction in US government support for clean technology is a temporary hurdle. They say that customers in Europe and Asia are eager to buy low-carbon chemicals and that the chemical industry is continuing to shift away from fossil fuels.

“There is a giant consumer movement towards biobased products,” Cutcliffe says. “No amount of government deregulation is going to quell that force.”

American Battery Technology

American Battery Technology has succeeded in attracting government support during both the Joe Biden and Trump administrations.

During the Biden years, the DOE’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains awarded American Battery Technology grants to help build lithium processing and battery recycling facilities in its home state of Nevada. The DOE is now considering cuts to grants awarded through that program.

But this year, American Battery Technology’s planned lithium facility was added to a list of mines that are getting priority treatment on permitting applications. And the project received a letter of interest for a $900 million financing package from the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

Even with those wins, CEO Ryan Melsert says American Battery Technology is affected by the changes in US policy. For example, the government’s rollback of funding for renewable energy generation and electric vehicles is hurting firms that use batteries, reducing the need for the lithium chemicals his company will make.

“The biggest change is the uncertainty,” Melsert says. “Our customers, our suppliers, everyone is in a little bit of a holding pattern, trying to see what actually manifests out of a lot of verbal statements.”

Melsert says getting the firm’s permits fast-tracked has sped up the timeline for its first commercial-scale lithium refinery, which already has customer commitments. But the timeline for the recycling plant has been extended because battery manufacturers that would create scrap in need of recycling have slowed their construction plans.

He says American Battery Technology’s strategy hasn’t changed significantly. Rather than trying to predict the future, Melsert says he stays focused on the details. “We’re trying to avoid the trap of reading the tea leaves,” he says.

BioConsortia

For sustainable agriculture companies, US policy changes have cut in both directions. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, has sharply criticized the use of chemical pesticides, creating an opening for biobased alternatives. But layoffs at the Environmental Protection Agency threaten to slow reviews of those products.

Even before the layoffs at US science agencies, the California-based agriculture technology company BioConsortia considered Brazil one of the best places to launch a new product. The global farming hub has become a model for efficient evaluations of new agricultural products, says CEO Marcus Meadows-Smith.

“The registration process is very clear. It’s fast and it’s efficient,” Meadows-Smith says of Brazil’s bureaucracy. “In the US, the EPA has been struggling, missing timelines. . . . Uncertainty is actually worse than bad news in some ways.”

BioConsortia specializes in products derived from gram-positive bacteria. The company is developing nitrogen-fixing bacteria to reduce the need for fertilizer, biostimulants that increase yield, and products that protect plants from fungi and nematodes.

Meadows-Smith says Kennedy’s attacks on chemical pesticides do provide an opportunity to highlight the environmental benefits of biological products, but the boost is limited. In most cases, companies like BioConsortia are trying to create products that work in concert with synthetic chemicals.

As a fairly established company founded in 2014, BioConsortia is less dependent than young start-ups on landing government grants and new venture capital investors to move forward. It already has investors who see the long-term potential of the technology, but Marcus-Meadows worries that some early-stage agriculture firms are in trouble.

“There are some companies that are on the brink of disaster because they can’t raise money,” he says.

Calcarea

The DOE recently rescinded billions of dollars for projects intended to capture carbon dioxide emitted by power plants in the US. But things are different at sea, where global climate policies are pushing carbon capture technologies forward.

Earlier this year, the International Maritime Organization, a body that regulates international shipping, voted to impose a type of carbon tax on heavy ships, starting in 2028.

That’s good news for Calcarea, which is developing a system, based on technology developed at the California Institute of Technology, that captures carbon emissions from ships. Installing such a system could help shipping firms reduce their carbon tax.

Calcarea’s technology sucks up seawater as a ship moves forward. CO₂ emitted by ship engines is dissolved into the water, making it more acidic. Then, the system reacts the acidic seawater with calcium carbonate, which releases calcium and bicarbonate ions into the seawater. Dissolved there, the ions store the carbon for up to 100,000 years.

The technology can reduce a ship’s CO₂ emissions by up to 50%, CEO Jess Adkins says. And leaving the carbon at sea means that ships don’t have to unload any carbon products when they reach a port.

Calcarea is building prototypes on land and is slated to install pilot carbon capture systems on a ship owned by the logistics company Lomar Shipping in 2026.

For the most part, the international nature of the shipping industry has insulated Calcarea from the instability in the US. “The US-based investors come in quite skeptical about carbon capture,” Adkins says. “With European-based investors, that’s much less true. . . . It has been a job of finding the right audience.”