On Monday, Huntington Beach-based private investment firm Leonid Capital Partners announced that it had made an investment in Durham-based tech startup AxNano.
Founded in 2011 and run since 2021 by CEO Doug Speight (editor’s note: Speight is a former subject of our interview series The Download), AxNano provides deep tech hardware platforms that destroy per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are also known as “forever chemicals.”
“PFAS contamination at military installations, manufacturing sites, and other impacted locations poses significant risk to human health and the environment,” Speight said. “These compounds are endocrine disruptors and bioaccumulate in humans over time, causing cancers, birth defects and other conditions.”
Speaking to that threat and the burden it places on organizations, Leonid Capital Partners’ release called PFAS contamination “one of the most expensive and unresolved environmental liabilities in the United States.”
The value of AxNano’s approach
Without technology like AxNano’s, traditional methods for addressing PFAS contamination involve transporting contaminated waste to centralized, off-site facilities. This is an inefficient and expensive process, which is why demand for alternatives is growing.
“The shift toward decentralized and verifiable destruction solutions is a trend we expect to continue,” Speight said. “Environmental regulation and the litigation environment increasingly reward technologies that not only remove PFAS from liquids and solids but also destroy them, reducing the long-term liabilities associated with disposal or incomplete treatment.
“Organizations want solutions that provide certainty and avoid future legal, regulatory, and environmental risk.”
AxNano’s technology, Speight made clear, provides those solutions.
“AxNano’s decentralized, on-site PFAS destruction technology helps our clients significantly reduce the time, cost, and logistical burden typically associated with transporting contaminated wastes to off-site facilities,” he said. “By enabling rapid treatment at the source, clients achieve complete destruction, increase operational efficiencies, reduce legal liability exposure, and avoid costly regulatory fines.”
The investment and what it means for AxNano
Speight said Leonid Capital Partners specializes in “providing capital to scale dual-use technologies (for both defense and commercial industries) that are poised for exponential growth. They target companies like AxNano that are positioned to access federal procurement opportunities and simultaneously expand rapidly within industrial verticals.”
He also noted that AxNano has been operating profitably for the past two fiscal years. The company has faced less obligation to raise capital than its competitors, which in turn insulates new investors against excess dilution “while accelerating development milestones.”
As organizations re-evaluate their approaches to mitigating PFAS risk, AxNano is seeing more interest from defense and industrial markets alike. Leonid Capital Partners’ involvement will help the company scale to meet that interest.
The investment also “represents another step in strengthening [relationships with institutional and strategic investors],” Speight said, “and positioning AxNano for future vertical integration.”
Specific financial terms of the investment were not revealed. You can read more about AxNano in GrepBeat’s 2024 feature, and view Leonid Capital Partners’ press release here.
