Berkeley spinout Calectra raises a $1.6 million pre-seed round
Making chemicals, metals, glass, and cement often requires scorching levels of heat. Today, many of those industrial processes use planet-warming fossil fuels to reach temperatures rivaling those of lava. But dozens of companies are racing to deploy novel technologies that can harness clean electricity to help solve one of heavy industry’s thorniest climate problems.
Calectra is one of the newest startups that’s vying to decarbonize industrial heat.
On Monday, the Oakland, California–based company announced that it had raised $2 million in total funding to further develop its thermal energy storage system. The technology involves using bricks to convert electricity into high-temperature heat, then storing and delivering that heat — potentially up to 1,600 degrees Celsius — by piping it to industrial manufacturers.
Calectra’s funding includes a $1.6 million pre-seed round led by Lifeline Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm in Finland, as well as $400,000 in total grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
“Our mission is to electrify the really high-temperature heat processes, primarily because that’s where we see the biggest gap in the market,” Pauliina Meskanen, Calectra’s co-founder and CEO, told Canary Media.
Meskanen, a Finnish entrepreneur, said she first met her co-founder, Nate Weger, in 2023 through a DOE-funded program called Cradle to Commerce, which aims to accelerate climate technologies developed in U.S. national laboratories. At the time, Weger was finishing his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley and conducting research on thermal energy storage at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Meskanen moved to the San Francisco Bay Area late last year to launch Calectra with Weger, who is also the company’s chief technology officer. Since then, the duo have been developing their thermal storage system at both Berkeley Lab and the Port Labs coworking space in Oakland, where they keep a high-temperature furnace downstairs and test brick materials, including a graphite-and-ceramic composite.
“We’re laser-focused on building a solution for high-temperature heat at low cost and zero carbon,” Meskanen said. “It’s risky, but it’s worth giving it a shot for the sake of the climate.”