Halifax clean concrete startup CarbonCure will use the largest venture capital raise in Nova Scotia history to more quickly execute on its product roadmap and double down on its business development activities in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Chief Executive Robert Niven said via email Thursday that CarbonCure has sold hundreds of its systems for sequestering carbon dioxide from concrete production within the concrete itself -- a process that also serves to strengthen the end product. Most of those units have been sold in North America, and now the company is looking to accelerate an already-underway international expansion as it pursues its mission of sequestering 500 tones of carbon annually by 2030.

CarbonCure, a star of the cleantech scene in Atlantic Canada and abroad, is funded by some of the most prominent names in innovation, including Bill Gates' and Jeff Bezos’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund. Niven said the new backers that joined his company’s recently announced US$80 million or C$105.7 million raise are strategic investors of a different variety — entities that can actively help accelerate the adoption of CarbonCure’s technology.

For example, BH3 Growth Equity, which provides working capital to real estate businesses, is already deploying CarbonCure systems as part of its other activities, as is Samsung Ventures.

“Our new and returning investors participating in this round are strategically very aligned with our mission,” said Niven. “Beyond their robust financial backing, these firms are force multipliers of innovation and sustainability, especially in the built environment.

“Many are end users of CarbonCure concrete, and they are acting as catalysts by sending strong market signals to concrete producers that lower carbon materials are a priority.”

CarbonCure has about 100 employees spread across 7 countries, all of whom will soon gather in Nova Scotia for a team summit to discuss the business’s future.

“Right now, as we wrap up our fiscal year, we’re focused on how we can best leverage this new funding opportunity to deploy our technologies and scale our business,” Niven wrote. “And I'm really looking forward to our team summit when we can properly celebrate this moment.”

For newly minted Invest Nova Scotia CEO Peter MacAskill — whose organization was one of Niven’s first investors under its prior guise of Innovacorp — CarbonCure’s raise highlights the extent to which the innovation ecosystem has matured in the past decade.

The next step for startup support organizations like Invest Nova Scotia, he said in an interview, is to ensure up-and-coming businesses are well-positioned to build on the momentum that raises like CarbonCure’s generate.

“(CarbonCure) is going to give us the attention,” said MacAskill. “People are going to say, ‘Oh, well this happened in Atlantic Canada, so what else is going on there?’

“It’s incumbent upon us to make sure that the companies that are going to attract this investment are ready and they understand what is required in the marketplace.”

Patrick Hankinson, general partner at Halifax-based Concrete Ventures, added that CarbonCure’s investors have the potential to act not just as “force multipliers” for the company itself, but also for the Atlantic Canadian startup ecosystem as a whole. That’s because when investors have increased contact with a region, they are more likely to discover other opportunities.

“It gets the people that are involved in those funds coming here to Halifax and meeting other companies,” Hankinson said. “It shrinks the network a bit.”