OXCCU, an Oxford-based carbon-to-value firm changing carbon dioxide and hydrogen into sustainable aviation gas (SAF), has acquired €2 million via the ATI Non-CO2 Programme.
The ATI Programme is delivered in partnership with the Aerospace Expertise Institute, Division for Enterprise and Commerce and Innovate UK, a part of UK Analysis and Innovation (UKRI). OXCCU is the primary SAF firm to obtain grant, which can be used to research the non-CO2 results of its artificial crude ‘OXFUEL’.
“This ATI Programme funding not solely allows us to advance our know-how but in addition helps our ambition to guide the business in producing cleaner aviation fuels with a decreased contribution to world warming,” mentioned Andrew Symes, CEO of OXCCU.
This grant awarded beneath the ATI Non-CO₂ Programme aligns with a wider sample of 2025 funding exercise in Europe’s sustainable aviation gas and e-fuels ecosystem.
Throughout the continent, comparable startups are progressing from pilot to industrial scale – comparable to Spark e-Fuels (Germany), which raised €2.3 million to construct its first e-fuel pilot plant; Catalyxx (Spain), which secured €3 million to boost its sustainable chemical substances and SAF R&D; and Brineworks (Netherlands), which obtained €6.8 million to scale its direct-air-capture know-how for e-fuel manufacturing.
EU-Startups has featured OXCCU a number of instances. The corporate was profiled in June 2023 within the article London-based OXCCU jets off with €20.6 million to rework CO₂ into sustainable aviation gas, highlighting its preliminary funding and industrial ambitions. It was later included within the July 2024 function From labs to market: 10 promising biotech startups primarily based within the UK, which positioned OXCCU amongst rising UK life-science and climate-tech innovators.
Most not too long ago, in September 2025, EU-Startups reported on its €23.7 million spherical in Oxford College spin-out OXCCU raises €23.7 million to scale waste-carbon-to-fuel course of, underscoring the startup’s progress from tutorial spin-out to a notable participant in Europe’s sustainable aviation gas sector.
“Non-CO2 results are an space of rising science that would have substantial implications for local weather technique in aviation. This funding will present important insights as we work to validate and scale our OXFUEL product,” added Symes.
Based in 2021, OXCCU, a ClimateTech spin-out firm from the College of Oxford, is growing novel catalysts and reactor designs to transform carbon dioxide and hydrogen into hydrocarbons with excessive conversion and selectivity to be used as fuels, chemical substances and plastics.
The corporate is headquartered within the UK, with operations at Begbroke Science Park, Oxford, and London Oxford Airport.
The whole funding price of €3.4 million is a results of the co-investment between business and the federal government via the Division of Enterprise and Commerce. The venture runs from July 2025 to June 2027, aiming to higher perceive how you can minimise the non-CO2 results of OXFUEL, and supporting the broader aim of growing cleaner fuels with decrease carbon depth.
Supported by the Aerospace Expertise Institute (ATI) Programme, the venture will discover how this modern new SAF produced with OXCCU’s novel F-T catalyst can probably cut back the warming related to the non-CO2 results of burning hydrocarbon gas in a jet turbine, along with the impact of the CO2 emissions.
The main focus will embrace soot particles, which might trigger cloud formation at altitude and subsequently affect world warming, although the quantity of warming (or cooling) these particles trigger depends on the situations and topic to ongoing analysis.
By specializing in cleaner gas growth, OXCCU seeks to place itself as a pacesetter within the UK’s push in the direction of a ten% SAF inclusion in jet gas by 2030.
OXCCU’s SAF, marketed beneath the model OXFUEL, leverages a novel iron-based Fischer-Tropsch catalyst which might work instantly with CO2. It has excessive selectivity in the direction of producing jet gas vary hydrocarbon syncrude in a single exothermic step, from which refined jet gas can simply be made.
In comparison with different processes, the corporate says this implies fewer steps and fewer hydrogen enter per quantity of jet gas, leading to decrease capital and working prices.
By validating its know-how on the OX1 demonstration plant at Oxford Airport in 2024, the corporate is concentrated on refining the lowest-cost pathways through direct hydrogenation of CO2, eliminating the complicated RWGS step or the a number of levels related to methanol manufacturing.
