Founded by veterans of Sandia National Laboratories, Kairos Power and Exowatt, the Denver company is commercializing supercritical CO2, the first real replacement for steam in 200 years, starting with a factory-built system that turns gas turbine waste heat into electricity.

American Supercritical emerged from stealth with $8 million in pre-seed funding to commercialize supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power blocks as factory-built equipment. Silent Ventures led the round, joined by Riot Ventures, Harpoon, Reveille VC, Hillwood, Mana Ventures, Climate Capital, Alumni Ventures and other angel investors.

The U.S. is building more power, driven by AI data centers, electrification and onshored manufacturing. Small gas turbines have captured most of that demand, wasting a third of their fuel as exhaust heat. 140 gigawatts run in the U.S., holding tens of gigawatts of recoverable power.

"Our first goal is to make wasteful simple cycle gas turbine installations obsolete," said Simon Shuham, co-founder and CEO. "Our sCO2 power block converts any gas turbine into a combined cycle plant. We upgrade turbines running today instead of replacing them."

Installed at the exhaust, the sCO2 system provides up to 50% more power with no additional fuel, no turbine modification and no re-permitting, at one-tenth the size of a steam system. Converting the US fleet would avoid about 20 million tons of CO2 a year, 10% of the natural gas sector's emissions, while providing gigawatts of additional power that is critically needed in today's market.

"Compressed timelines pushed operators toward simple cycle turbines. Wasting fuel was never the goal," said Matt Carlson, co-founder and CTO, a decade-long sCO2 veteran of Sandia, Heliogen and Kairos Power.

The same platform extends to small modular reactors, geothermal, concentrated solar and industrial waste heat; tens of terawatt-hours of recoverable power a year.

American Supercritical is starting in a 25,000-square-foot Denver facility for testing and low-volume production. Its team includes alumni of Sandia, Echogen, Hanwha, Blue Origin, Southwest Research Institute, and Google X, and is hiring engineers across turbomachinery and power electronics. You can find more at americansupercritical.com.

About American Supercritical

American Supercritical commercializes supercritical CO2 power cycles as factory-built equipment converting heat into electricity for combined cycle efficiencies in a fraction of steam's footprint. Headquartered in Denver, the company is backed by Silent Ventures, Riot Ventures, Harpoon and others.

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