In an utterly on-brand move for corporate R&D, a groundbreaking discovery that could have reshaped the energy landscape was accidentally made, promptly ignored, and finally resurrected two decades later—because, of course, someone finally smelled money.
Tulum Energy, a new startup with old ideas, just raised a cool $27 million in seed funding to commercialize a hydrogen production technique that was, quite literally, collecting dust in a file cabinet since the early 2000s.
Between 2002 and 2005, engineers at Techint Group were fiddling with an electric arc furnace, trying to optimize steel production, when they stumbled into something extraordinary.
Instead of burning carbon electrodes into oblivion, they watched them grow—because why not defy basic physics before breakfast?
Unbeknownst to them at the time, they had triggered a pyrolysis reaction, a process that breaks down methane without oxygen, producing pure hydrogen and solid carbon.
Essentially, they found a way to make clean hydrogen without spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—a climate scientist’s fever dream, lost in bureaucratic indifference.
“We didn’t know what to do with it. Nobody cared about methane pyrolysis or hydrogen,” said Tulum Energy CEO Massimiliano Pieri in a statement to TechCrunch, recapping the early 2000s era when clean energy was considered quaint, if not outright unprofitable.
And so the discovery was shelved, archived, and forgotten—perhaps filed under “Too Smart for 2005.”
Fast-forward nearly 20 years, and hydrogen has suddenly become the belle of the energy investment ball.
Amid global panic over fossil fuels and climate goals that no one’s meeting anyway, hydrogen is now hot property.
In the mad dash for greener energy solutions, Techint’s venture arm, TechEnergy Ventures, began looking into cleaner hydrogen production methods.
After probably spending way too much on consultants, someone within the company casually remembered, “Oh yeah, didn’t we do that back in the day?”
This “Eureka” moment triggered the launch of Tulum Energy, the startup built on a once-forgotten laboratory accident now rebranded as climate tech genius.
And investors have bitten.
Tulum just closed an oversubscribed $27 million seed round led by TDK Ventures and CDP Venture Capital.
Also jumping in were Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, MITO Tech Ventures, and—naturally—TechEnergy Ventures, now deeply invested in monetizing their own oversight.
Tulum Energy plans to use the funding to scale its technology and build out a commercial operation that can turn methane into hydrogen and solid carbon without the pesky emissions.
Unlike traditional hydrogen production, which releases copious amounts of CO₂, Tulum’s process traps carbon as a solid, opening up the potential for its use in other industries—or, you know, just not spewing it into the sky.
The process also sidesteps the massive energy needs of water electrolysis, which requires both vast amounts of electricity and moral superiority points from fans of “green hydrogen.”
According to a 2023 IEA report, global hydrogen demand could double by 2030, but over 95% of current production still comes from fossil fuels using polluting processes like steam methane reforming.
With growing pressure to meet decarbonization targets, alternative methods like pyrolysis are receiving a second, more serious look.
Even major energy players like Shell and BP have started investing in cleaner hydrogen pathways, presumably to continue appearing green while still bathing in oil profits.
For Tulum, the rediscovery of a forgotten industrial fluke has now become a $27 million validation in a field desperate for disruption.
As for the engineers who first stumbled into the idea and watched it languish unnoticed for two decades—no word on whether they got a raise.
But hey, at least now their mistake is considered visionary.
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