Metafuels announces $24 million funding round for eMethanol-to-jet project development

Metafuels announced Feb. 18 a $24 million funding round as its Aerobrew product moves towards market introduction.

Global sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production must increase more than 150-fold by 2050 to meet projected aviation demand—a scale that Metafuels says “biobased fuels alone cannot deliver.”

The Swiss aviation-technology company said it is addressing this challenge with a synthetic methanol-to-jet technology designed to unlock the volumes, economics and deep lifecycle-emissions reductions that aviation will need over the long term.

The round is led by UVC Partners, with strong participation from existing investors including Energy Impact Partners, Contrarian Ventures, RockCreek, Verve Ventures and Fortescue Ventures.

Metafuels said the financing underscores investor confidence in its move from breakthrough technology to first-of-a-kind commercial plants and a repeatable industrial model.

The new capital will drive the realization of Metafuels’ commercial projects—advancing flagship facilities toward final-investment decisions and implementation, while laying the strong engineering, delivery and organizational foundations needed for multiplant deployment across Europe and beyond as SAF mandates gain momentum.

This includes progressing facilities through front-end engineering design (FEED), as well as commercial and financial project-development activities.

Metafuels is currently preparing its methanol-to-jet demonstration plant at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland for operation, while advancing Turbe, its first commercial eSAF facility in the Port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Turbe is intended to be the initial commercial deployment of the Aerobrew technology and a blueprint for future large-scale plants aligned with ReFuelEU aviation and emerging global mandates from 2030 onward.

Decarbonizing the aviation sector remains a critical challenge, the company noted.

The sector accounts for over 2 percent of global CO2 emissions, some 800 million metric tons.

When accounting for additional greenhouse gases and complex climate cofactors resulting from the nature and altitude of emissions, the sector’s total contribution to global warming rises to approximately 3.5 percent, according to Metafuels.

Metafuels focuses on the methanol-to-jet route to SAF, a synthetic pathway that converts renewable methanol into drop-in jet fuel.

Renewable methanol can be produced either from sustainable biomass or by using renewable electricity and water to make green hydrogen, which is then combined with captured carbon, making methanol one of the most scalable intermediates available for aviation decarbonization, the company stated.

Metafuels said its differentiator is cost leadership, achieved through the ability to convert eMethanol into eSAF with a significantly higher yield, ensuring a more efficient and cost-effective process.

Metafuels’ signature eSAF, Aerobrew, can replace conventional kerosene regardless of the size, type of aircraft and short-haul or long-haul flights.

Metafuels’ fuels are fully compatible with existing aircraft, engines and airport infrastructure.

“Compared with today’s dominant SAF pathway—hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA), which relies on constrained supplies of waste oils and fats—methanol-based eSAF is not limited by feedstock availability,” the company stated.

As a result, Metafuels said that methanol-to-jet is widely regarded as a critical pathway for meeting long-term SAF demand, particularly as blending mandates rise sharply from 2030 onward.

“If sustainable aviation fuel is to become a true alternative to fossil jet fuel, it has to work at an industrial scale and competitive cost,” said Metafuels CEO Saurabh Kapoor. “Methanol-to-jet makes that possible. With Aerobrew, we are building a technology that allows airlines to decarbonize without changing how they operate—and that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the future of flight. This round is about execution. We are moving from demonstrating our technology to deploying it at an industrial scale.”

Metafuels said this funding round comes at a critical point for the eSAF sector.

Regulations such as ReFuelEU aviation are creating clear, long-term demand while the ASTM accreditation process for methanol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (SPK)—the fuel produced by Aerobrew—is progressing towards completion, with approval expected in early 2026.

This certification is required for large-scale commercial offtake and is a key enabler for investment in synthetic-fuel production.

With projects progressing in Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands, Metafuels said it is positioned to support the next phase of SAF deployment as regulatory requirements and market demand accelerate through the 2030s.

“This investment round is about progressing the implementation of this unique technology that has the potential to scale and drive down costs of SAF up to a point where it becomes an economical alternative to fossil fuel,” said Johannes von Borries, a managing partner at UVC Partners. “Metafuels has the potential to drive that shift—fundamentally changing how aviation grows and how people think about flying.”