French energy startup Spark Cleantech picks up €30 million to bring cleaner energy to heavy industry

Paris-based Spark Cleantech today announced the successful completion of a €30 million Series A funding round (including €17 million in equity) to enable the decarbonisation of heavy industries (glassmaking, metallurgy, polymers, batteries) through a clean alternative to fossil-fuel combustion.

The round was led by 360 Capital and Taranis, with participation from the Île-de-France Reindustrialisation Fund (initiated by the Île-de-France Region and operated by Innovacom), alongside Asterion Ventures, the company’s long-standing investor.

“Following our Seed round in the summer of 2023, we succeeded in deploying a first industrial pilot in under a year. We have validated clear market traction and assembled a world-class international team. This funding will enable the scale-up that industrial players are seeking to reduce their carbon footprint cost-effectively and to accelerate commercial deployment,” comments Patrick Peters, co-founder of Spark Cleantech.

Recent 2025 funding activity shows that industrial-decarbonisation and clean-materials technologies remain a strong focus for European venture capital.

For example, GravitHy – a Marseille-based low-carbon iron producer targeting the clean-steel sector – raised €60 million to finance its plan to supply Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) / Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI) to steelmakers, advance engineering, secure permits and hire staff. Similarly, Tulum Energy – a Milan-based startup focused on scalable low-carbon hydrogen production via methane pyrolysis – secured €22.9 million in Seed funding to build out its clean-hydrogen production technology for industrial use. And PeroCycle, a Cambridge-based carbon-recycling firm aiming to decarbonise steelmaking through a closed-loop carbon-recycling technology, raised €4.5 million to support its pilot deployment and development of its process.

In that light, the €30 million Series A round for Spark Cleantech is firmly embedded in a broader European trend: investors are backing a diversified array of DeepTech decarbonisation solutions addressing hard-to-abate industrial sectors.

The presence of sizeable raises in adjacent areas such as low-carbon iron (GravitHy), clean hydrogen (Tulum Energy), and carbon recycling (PeroCycle) underscores that there is continuing appetite for technologies that materially reduce industrial CO₂ emissions while remaining compatible with existing industrial value chains.

Moreover, because none of those other companies is Paris-based, this round adds domestic strength in France to this cross-Europe wave of industrial climate-tech investment.

Founded in 2022 within the laboratories of CentraleSupélec, Spark Cleantech has developed a technology based on pulsed plasmolysis, reducing emissions by 85% while generating two decarbonised materials (solid carbon and hydrogen) with a four-fold increase in economic value.

Founded by Erwan Pannier and Patrick Peters, the company has raised €34 million since inception.

This new investment will accelerate Spark Cleantech’s scale-up, enabling the company to finalise and operate its first production module, which will subsequently be deployed across client facilities.

It will also support the qualification of Spark Cleantech’s first commercial carbon grades, one of the two materials generated by pulsed plasmolysis. The team will expand with 20 new roles across commercial operations, engineering, and R&D.

“The decarbonisation of heavy industry is one of the defining challenges of the decades ahead. But we must be candid: without economic viability, it simply will not happen. In Spark Cleantech, we found a team of entrepreneurs and industrial leaders who share this pragmatic view and who are delivering a technology that responds directly to it,” adds Thomas Nivard, Partner at 360 Capital.

Their process replaces the combustion of hydrocarbons in high-temperature industrial furnaces and in materials production with an alternative that is reportedly not only fully decarbonised, but also economically competitive and requires minimal adaptation to existing industrial processes.

Spark Cleantech’s modules are installed between the client’s existing gas network and their high-temperature industrial burners. Through pulsed plasma, the technology removes carbon from the gas prior to combustion, leaving only hydrogen, a fully decarbonised energy source.

The extracted carbon is transformed into a solid nanomaterial, essential for polymers and battery manufacturing. Spark Cleantech’s carbon, produced without emissions, replaces a petroleum-derived material with a high carbon footprint.

In practical terms, pulsed plasmolysis converts a hydrocarbon, without combustion, into two decarbonised materials whose combined economic value is multiplied by four. Spark Cleantech’s technology is currently being tested by clients across metallurgy, glassmaking, polymer production, and battery manufacturing.

Spark Cleantech’s modules will be installed directly on industrial sites consuming natural gas, enabling hydrogen to be produced exactly where it is needed, without transport or large-scale storage. The solid carbon will be collected and routed to industrial sectors that utilise this nanomaterial.

Advanced discussions are under way with several industrial groups, and initial contracts have already been signed to prepare the deployment of commercial units in 2027.

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