Our History

How It All Started at Carbon Capture for Everyone

A couple of years ago, Jochen Martin Kleef had a question that wouldn’t go away:
If we don’t do it, who will?

It was during two coaching projects in an official grant program run by the Investment Bank Berlin that were both looking into carbon dioxide removal (CDR), that the idea started to crystallize. As an experienced business leader with a scientific background and three decades of international project management, Jochen had seen firsthand how bold ideas can become real solutions – especially when urgency meets innovation.

The climate crisis felt personal. And the dominant narrative around carbon removal—giant centralized plants, billion-dollar investments, and long timelines—just didn’t sit right. Why shouldn’t everyone, not just governments and corporations, have the power to capture carbon?

So the vision was born: Direct Air Carbon Capture 4 Everyone

Small, scalable, simple machines that could remove CO₂ directly from the air—deployed in homes, businesses, schools, even cafés. Built like solar panels for the atmosphere. Affordable. Accessible. Impactful.

Inspired by the Epiphyte project of the Open Air Collective in the US to which he got invited to contribute by one of the two co-founders, Chris Neidl, Jochen got to work. He built the first prototype of a DAC device using solar energy, liquid sorbents, and a custom-designed sensoring system to track the CO₂ captured daily. The first concept version sat humming in his Spanish workspace.

The proof of concept was there—and the urgency too. But this wasn’t a one-person mission, so Jochen set out to do what he had done on a number of occasions before: build a co-founding team bringing the additional skills & expertises, joined together based on their values to form a strong bond with a unique team chemistry, and all committed to the joint vision.

In early 2025, a founding team of six co-founders came together, each bringing a unique strength.

  • Jochen Martin Kleef, a seasoned strategist and operations leader driving growth in climate tech,
  • Evan Landau, an award-winning industrial designer with roots at Google,
  • Callum Russell, a PhD chemical engineer obsessed with scalable capture chemistry,
  • Gabriele Pizzuti, a carbon market veteran,
  • Delphine Camberlin, a branding and digital expert passionate about sustainability,
  • An extra expert, covering sensoring, IT, electronics & software.
Learn more about
Our Team

They aligned around the same belief: climate tech must be democratized. The solution couldn’t just live in policy papers or far-off industrial parks—it needed to be in people’s homes, schools, and cities. It needed to be visible.

The startup, registered in Spain in October 2024 as “Direct Air Carbon Capture S.L.”, launched with the bold ambition of helping scale carbon removal globally through a crowd-based approach—where every device counts, and every user contributes to measurable climate action.

Today, the team is finalizing its first generation of DAC devices, building a digital platform for CO₂ monitoring and carbon credit generation, and sharing its journey publicly – from tech to team.

Because climate action shouldn’t be reserved for the few – It should be for everyone.