Rivan, a UK-based startup that develops vertically integrated synthetic fuel, has raised €28.7 million (£25 million) to scale domestic synthetic fuel production in Europe.
The round was led by IQ Capital, with support from Plural. This funding follows the company’s €11.4 million (£10 million) Seed round, raised 10 months earlier and also led by Plural, with participation from 20VC, NFDG (Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross), and prominent angel investors Patrick and John Collison (Stripe).
Founded in 2024 by Harvey Hodd, Rivan makes synthetic fuels for industries you can’t electrify at country-scale and fossil-fuel prices. It aims to quickly reduce the cost of synthetic fuels so they become cheaper than fossil fuels for heavy industries such as steel, cement, chemicals, and aviation, thereby removing gigatonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.
According to the company, this is particularly important in Europe, where nearly 60% of all energy is imported. This exposes the continent to huge cost fluctuations and supply concerns. Rivan states that, most recently, this fragility was highlighted by the war in the Middle East, which doubled wholesale gas prices and placed countries such as the UK, France, Germany and Spain in a state of energy emergency.
The startup intends to address this by facilitating domestic synthetic fuel production, beginning with Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG). Their goal is to produce at costs competitive with fossil fuels and at scales that meet the entire industrial demand of countries such as the UK, Spain, and France.
The company claims that in order to achieve greater scale and lower cost synthetic fuels than anyone else in history, it vertically integrates every step of production, including renewable energy generation and H2 and CO2, to reactor synthesis and gas-grid injection.
It states that all hardware is designed and manufactured by Rivan in the UK from scratch, enabling it to move rapidly with a domestic supply chain.
After raising its Seed funding in 2025, the company achieved some major milestones too. Its UK-based SNG plant is now in commissioning, and Rivan believes it will produce the most cost-effective SNG ever. The company tripled its customer contracts, selling its entire planned production until 2029. It also leased its new 50,000 sqft manufacturing facility, Production Base 1.
With the fresh funding, it plans to accelerate its deployment, scale R&D efforts, and support the opening of its new manufacturing facility. In the next 12 months, Rivan will focus on the deployment of Project Steadfast, its 15MW plant in Wiltshire. This will represent the largest SNG plant in Europe and the first time SNG has ever been injected into the UK gas grid, says the company.
It will also scale production in the UK at Production Base 1, producing up to 50MWs/yr of hardware, and invest heavily in all areas of R&D, including direct-air capture, electrolysis, reactors and solar, to challenge fossil-fuel pricing within the next 2-3 years.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/04/uk-startup-rivan-raises-e28-7-million-to-scale-domestic-synthetic-fuel-production-in-europe/
