Remora Carbon
Remora Carbon is the climate hardware company Paul Gross describes in Founder Mode: Paul Gross, Founder & CEO of Remora Carbon. The company builds retrofit systems for semi trucks and locomotives that capture CO2 from exhaust and purify it into beverage-grade CO2. On semi trucks, Gross describes the device as a large box between the truck and trailer; on rail, the system is a rail car behind the locomotive that takes exhaust from the stack and produces liquid CO2.
The source presents Remora as a Mobile Carbon Capture company built around a market mismatch: some U.S. regions face CO2 shortages while freight vehicles emit large amounts of CO2. Gross says the company has partnerships with trucking companies and railroads, but that the main barrier has been technical reliability in demanding freight environments.
The founding story matters because the team combines different kinds of domain learning. Gross came from software engineering and data science, Christina brought doctoral work on mobile carbon capture, and Eric brought diesel-mechanic and alternative-truck experience. The team joined Y Combinator Winter 2021 during the fully virtual batch and built an early prototype in Eric’s garage in Detroit.
The source also turns Remora into a Founder Risk Deep Dive case. Gross says he focuses on the company’s top risks, including soot and ash filtration, CO2 liquefaction, selling CO2, government affairs, and manufacturing scale-up, while delegating areas that are working well.
Connections
- Paul Gross - founder and CEO in the source.
- Mobile Carbon Capture, Economic Climate Tech Adoption, and Climate Startup Commercialization Gap - climate hardware and commercialization context.
- Y Combinator, The Social Radars, Jessica Livingston, and Carolyn Levy - source and accelerator context.
- Founder Mode, Founder Risk Deep Dive, and Founder Delegation Discipline - operating pattern Gross describes.
- Hard Problem MVP Scoping, Hard Tech Fundraising, and Founder-Led Sales - adjacent hard-tech, fundraising, and customer-learning patterns.