Circularity Fuels Raises $7M for Dairy Biogas Jet Fuel

Circularity Fuels has put airline contracts on the same work list as its next reactor. The Redwood City, California company is developing equipment that converts dairy biogas into sustainable aviation fuel, bringing the farm supplying the carbon and the airline buying the fuel into the same industrial project.

On November 5, 2026, Circularity announced a $7M Seed round co-led by Trucks Venture Capital and DCVC, with participation from Sum Ventures and Automotive Ventures. The financing supports an 18-month program spanning daily demonstration production, engineering for a 75-barrel-per-day commercial plant, and the fuel contracts needed to begin construction.

That combination gives the announcement its commercial weight. A distributed supply of waste gas becomes more valuable when somebody can run the equipment beside it and somebody else can commit to buying the output. Circularity is using this round to advance those relationships alongside the machinery.

What the seed round puts to work

Circularity's stated plan carries the company from its field pilot toward demonstration operations and a commercial design. Running a demonstration plant every day should give its engineers a different body of experience from a successful individual conversion: operating continuity, maintenance demands and the work of keeping the process supplied all become part of the development assignment.

The company also plans to license the technology behind its Ouro reactor to partners building plants of their own. That creates a second commercial relationship around the hardware. Circularity can pursue fuel projects while offering another developer access to the conversion technology, with a corresponding need to make that technology understandable and usable beyond its own team.

DCVC's incubation account places founder Stephen Beaton's work inside a longer effort to make useful hydrocarbons from renewable energy and available carbon. DCVC disclosed its incubation of Circularity in February 2025; this round returns the firm to a company whose development it has already helped support. Trucks joins as a co-lead in financing the next operating program.

For a project developer, the important connection is between the equipment and the commitments around it. The proposed commercial plant has a design capacity, the farm has a feedstock, and the prospective airline has fuel requirements. Turning those elements into a working project requires each participant to understand what the others can reliably deliver.

How Ouro and Aion turn dairy gas into fuel

Circularity describes its Ouro reactor as an electrically heated microchannel reforming system. It converts waste carbon into synthesis gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Dry reforming uses methane and carbon dioxide together, making the composition of biogas part of the process design rather than simply an impurity problem to be removed upstream.

The Aion reactor handles the next stage through Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. It converts synthesis gas into liquid hydrocarbons, followed by separation into fuel products. Circularity pairs these stages in compact, modular systems intended to operate at the scale of a local feedstock resource.

The distinction between a reactor and a complete fuel installation matters. An effective reformer has to work with synthesis, separation, utilities and the people operating the site. The company's plan brings those obligations into the same development program, where improving an individual component has value through its effect on the whole process.

In its June pilot announcement, Circularity reported a six-month run using raw biogas from a dairy near Madera, California, producing fuel meeting ASTM D7566 Annex A1 specifications. That is a company-reported result from a particular deployment. It provides a concrete starting point for the next installation without turning a pilot into an operating commercial fleet.

The founders are building across two working worlds

Circularity's current leadership page identifies Stephen Beaton as CEO and co-founder, Fergus Noble as CTO and co-founder, and Gaurav Kamat as CSO and co-founder. Beaton previously served as lab chief of the U.S. Air Force Petroleum Office's deployed lab, a background that connects the company to the practical requirements of fuel handling and performance.

The proposed customer relationship reaches beyond the chemistry. A dairy operator considering an installation needs to know who operates it, how it fits existing work and what happens when equipment needs attention. An airline evaluating a future supply needs confidence in the producer's ability to deliver fuel consistently. Those are different conversations attached to the same production system.

Circularity's licensing plan gives the team another audience: partners that want to build their own facilities. Such partners will need a usable technology package and a clear understanding of the operating assumptions behind it. The commercial opportunity therefore includes how successfully the company can transfer its process knowledge, alongside the fuel it may produce itself.

The company's careers page seeks engineers and operators in Redwood City. That emphasis fits the transition described in the funding announcement: more of the work moves into building, running and supporting equipment. The company has not disclosed a named airline offtake customer in this announcement, leaving the buyer relationship as an explicit part of the funded work.

Plant finance enters the development conversation

Circularity says its application for a USDA Section 9003 loan guarantee has advanced to Phase 2 review. The USDA program description explains that the second phase includes environmental and technical reports, a financial model and credit evaluation. Progress into review remains distinct from an awarded guarantee or money available for construction.

That distinction helps explain the role of the seed round. Technical work, commercial engineering and buyer discussions can produce the information a larger project needs before construction financing can be assessed. The announcement links these efforts without disclosing a completed financing package for the proposed plant.

For operators and investors following sustainable aviation fuel, Circularity offers a particular development model: move conversion equipment toward the waste resource and build the fuel relationship around that location. The economics will depend on the operating conditions of those sites and the terms under which partners and buyers participate. The company has disclosed its intended direction, while commercial operating costs and contract terms remain unavailable.

The next installation brings those counterparties closer together. At the dairy, a team will have to keep the reactors running through an ordinary working day; on the purchasing side, somebody will need enough confidence in that operation to commit to its future output. Circularity's engineers and commercial team now have funding to work on both ends of that conversation.