OXCCU Raises £20.75M to Scale Its One-Step Process for Converting Waste Carbon Into Jet Fuel

September 19, 2025

OXCCU, the Oxford University spin-out developing technology to convert waste carbon into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), raised £20.75 million ($28 million) in an oversubscribed Series B funding round in September 2025. New investors included IAGi Ventures (the corporate venturing arm of International Airlines Group), Safran Corporate Ventures, Orlen VC, Hostplus, and TCVC. Existing investors — Clean Energy Ventures, IP Group/Kiko Ventures, Aramco Ventures, Eni Next, Braavos Capital, and the University of Oxford — all reinvested. The capital will accelerate OXCCU's commercialisation programme, fund operations at its second demonstration plant (OX2, expected fully operational in 2026), and support ongoing technology scale-up.

Aviation accounts for approximately 2.5% of global CO2 emissions, but its total climate impact — including contrail and non-CO2 warming effects — is considerably larger. Sustainable aviation fuel is the most credible near-term solution to decarbonising the sector: it is a drop-in replacement for conventional jet fuel, compatible with existing aircraft engines and airport infrastructure, and capable of reducing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by up to 85%. The problem is cost. Most SAF production pathways involve multiple capital-intensive conversion steps — typically including a reverse water-gas shift reaction to convert CO2 into CO, followed by a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis — which together make the resulting fuel two to five times more expensive than conventional kerosene. Despite regulatory mandates (the UK SAF Mandate and the EU’s ReFuelEU) and growing airline commitment, SAF accounted for only 0.7% of total aviation fuel consumption in 2025, largely because of this cost barrier.

OXCCU’s core innovation is a patented iron-based catalyst that enables the direct synthesis of jet-fuel-range hydrocarbons from gaseous waste carbon in a single exothermic reaction, eliminating the intermediate steps that drive up cost in conventional pathways. The catalyst can work with a wide range of input feedstocks — reformed biogas, gasified wood waste, CO2 with green hydrogen, and industrial gas streams from steel or cement production — giving it feedstock flexibility that most competing approaches lack. The company was spun out from the University of Oxford in 2021 by Andrew Symes (CEO) and Jane Jin, built on over a decade of fundamental research in catalysis and reactor design. Its first demonstration plant, OX1, opened at London Oxford Airport in 2024 and has generated the operational data underpinning OX2’s design.

The Series B proceeds will enable OXCCU to move from demonstration to commercial-scale operations, supporting both scale-up engineering and regulatory pathway work. The company has been named to Cleantech Group’s 2025 Global Cleantech 100 and received an ATI Programme grant to investigate the non-CO2 climate effects of its OXFUEL synthetic crude — a first for any SAF producer and an important step toward full lifecycle accreditation.

The investor composition of this round is strategically significant. IAGi Ventures — which committed up to €200 million over five years specifically to SAF and sustainability investments — brings both capital and a direct demand signal: IAG has committed to meeting 10% of its fuel needs with SAF by 2030. Safran (aerospace engines) and Orlen (European refining) bring industrial scale and downstream route-to-market capability. This combination of airline, engine manufacturer, energy company, and specialist climate investors represents exactly the kind of cross-sector syndicate that credible SAF scale-up requires.

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