UniSieve raises $9m Series A to replace heat with membranes in industrial separation
Zurich deep tech UniSieve raises $9m in a Series A led by the Orano Venture Fund, taking total funding to $25m for heat-free molecular separation.
UniSieve, a Zurich deep tech company founded in 2018 as a spin-out of ETH Zurich, announced a Series A of 9 million dollars on 8 October 2026. The Orano Venture Fund, managed by Supernova Invest, led the round. Amadeus APEX Technology Fund, Founderful, Zürcher Kantonalbank and Guenat Holding took part as new and existing investors. The round brings total funding to 25 million dollars. The company was founded by Samuel Hess, now chief executive, and Elia Schneider, who met as classmates at ETH Zurich.
The product is a high precision hybrid membrane built on metal-organic frameworks and zeolites, which act as molecular sieves. Conventional industrial separation drives mixtures apart with heat, which means a heating and cooling cycle and the capital equipment that goes with it. UniSieve separates the same mixtures by letting selected molecules pass through the membrane, so no thermal cycle is required. The company places two applications at pre-commercial maturity: olefins, the feedstock for plastics, and point-source carbon capture.
Proceeds go to scaling membrane production in the markets the company already serves and to extending the platform into further industrial applications. Tech Funding News and Dealroom report that Qemetica, the Polish chemicals group formerly known as CIECH, has begun live testing a UniSieve carbon capture unit, with the recovered CO2 used on site to make carbonates such as soda. That detail does not appear in the company release, which names no customers and refers only in general terms to paying customers.
The investor list is worth reading closely. The Orano Venture Fund is the corporate venture vehicle of the French nuclear fuel-cycle group Orano, and it offers portfolio companies access to the group's industrial infrastructure. Its manager, Supernova Invest, has about 800 million euros under management across more than 80 portfolio companies over 20 years, and is backed by Amundi and the French atomic energy commission, CEA. Zürcher Kantonalbank, a Swiss cantonal bank, sits in the same round. Wolfgang Neubert, general partner at APEX Ventures, said: "UniSieve has moved methodically from pilot deployments to larger systems with paying customers." Hess said the capital lets the company focus on execution.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: separation is one of the quiet cost lines across agricultural processing, and this round prices the problem rather than the chemistry. Biogas plants upgrading raw gas to biomethane, fertiliser and ammonia loops, and the CO2 supply into food and beverage all run on the same thermal physics UniSieve is trying to retire, and all of them sit on sites where heat demand is already the operator's largest controllable cost. Three things in the financing travel. First, eight years from founding to a 9 million dollar Series A, with 25 million raised in total, is the honest shape of a European process technology curve, and a founder modelling 24 months from lab to Series A on hardware like this is modelling a different company. Second, the lead is a strategic corporate fund that brings plant access and not only money, which in process engineering is the scarcer input, because UniSieve needed real industrial flue gas and real plant uptime far more than it needed another term sheet. Third, a regional bank in the syndicate is a reminder that DACH deep tech still has a capital source outside venture, and one that tends to follow a paying customer rather than a thesis. The caution sits in the company's own wording: pre-commercial maturity in two applications is not a product line, and the next real proof point is a membrane plant that holds its selectivity for years in dirty gas, not a pilot that holds it for months.
UniSieve, a Zurich deep tech company founded in 2018 as a spin-out of ETH Zurich, announced a Series A of 9 million dollars on 8 October 2026. The Orano Venture Fund, managed by Supernova Invest, led the round. Amadeus APEX Technology Fund, Founderful, Zürcher Kantonalbank and Guenat Holding took part as new and existing investors. The round brings total funding to 25 million dollars. The company was founded by Samuel Hess, now chief executive, and Elia Schneider, who met as classmates at ETH Zurich.
The product is a high precision hybrid membrane built on metal-organic frameworks and zeolites, which act as molecular sieves. Conventional industrial separation drives mixtures apart with heat, which means a heating and cooling cycle and the capital equipment that goes with it. UniSieve separates the same mixtures by letting selected molecules pass through the membrane, so no thermal cycle is required. The company places two applications at pre-commercial maturity: olefins, the feedstock for plastics, and point-source carbon capture.
Proceeds go to scaling membrane production in the markets the company already serves and to extending the platform into further industrial applications. Tech Funding News and Dealroom report that Qemetica, the Polish chemicals group formerly known as CIECH, has begun live testing a UniSieve carbon capture unit, with the recovered CO2 used on site to make carbonates such as soda. That detail does not appear in the company release, which names no customers and refers only in general terms to paying customers.
The investor list is worth reading closely. The Orano Venture Fund is the corporate venture vehicle of the French nuclear fuel-cycle group Orano, and it offers portfolio companies access to the group's industrial infrastructure. Its manager, Supernova Invest, has about 800 million euros under management across more than 80 portfolio companies over 20 years, and is backed by Amundi and the French atomic energy commission, CEA. Zürcher Kantonalbank, a Swiss cantonal bank, sits in the same round. Wolfgang Neubert, general partner at APEX Ventures, said: "UniSieve has moved methodically from pilot deployments to larger systems with paying customers." Hess said the capital lets the company focus on execution.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: separation is one of the quiet cost lines across agricultural processing, and this round prices the problem rather than the chemistry. Biogas plants upgrading raw gas to biomethane, fertiliser and ammonia loops, and the CO2 supply into food and beverage all run on the same thermal physics UniSieve is trying to retire, and all of them sit on sites where heat demand is already the operator's largest controllable cost. Three things in the financing travel. First, eight years from founding to a 9 million dollar Series A, with 25 million raised in total, is the honest shape of a European process technology curve, and a founder modelling 24 months from lab to Series A on hardware like this is modelling a different company. Second, the lead is a strategic corporate fund that brings plant access and not only money, which in process engineering is the scarcer input, because UniSieve needed real industrial flue gas and real plant uptime far more than it needed another term sheet. Third, a regional bank in the syndicate is a reminder that DACH deep tech still has a capital source outside venture, and one that tends to follow a paying customer rather than a thesis. The caution sits in the company's own wording: pre-commercial maturity in two applications is not a product line, and the next real proof point is a membrane plant that holds its selectivity for years in dirty gas, not a pilot that holds it for months.
