In the next economy, the winners won’t be those who extract the most. But those who build smarter, more efficient solutions that can last the longest. Material Evolution is doing exactly that: replacing one of the planet’s dirtiest materials with something better, cheaper, and built to scale.

Concrete is everywhere, and it’s one of the planet’s biggest polluters. Cement, its key ingredient, accounts for around 8% of global CO₂ emissions – a staggering figure driven not just by fossil fuel use, but by the chemistry itself. Producing it means heating limestone to extreme temperatures, releasing carbon locked in the rock. It’s an outdated process that’s not only dirty, but also incredibly costly.

Material Evolution has flipped that model on its head. Instead of limestone, their proprietary cement is made from industrial waste and activated through a low-energy process at ambient temperatures. The result is a product with 85% fewer carbon emissions than traditional cement (OPC), with superior performance, and crucially, with a supply chain that’s local, circular and future-proof. Even the production infrastructure – gigafactories for cement – is cheaper to build compared to legacy cement facilities.

In an industry known for its resistance to change, Material Evolution’s speed is unusual. In just a few years, the company has gone from a garage lab to commercial-scale production in Wrexham. They’ve signed customers across the industry, and assembled a team of 20+ world-class scientists and engineers.

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From Parents’ Garage to Industrial Disruption

Dr. Liz Gilligan, Material Evolution’s co-founder and CEO, didn’t start in venture-backed boardrooms or factory floors. She started with her co-founder Sam Clark in her parents’ garage, surrounded by buckets of chemical compounds and a stubborn belief that the most destructive industry in the world could be re-engineered.

“I was always interested in how materials shape our world. But the more I learned about cement, the more it terrified me. Everyone was tiptoeing around it because of how hard it was to decarbonise. But I couldn't sit on the sidelines and write papers about this. I had to act”, Liz says.

She shares a trait with the new wave of founders building the next economy, those who understand that the biggest returns come from solving the hardest problems.

Armed with a PhD in sustainable cement and early experience on high-profile projects like the Apple Campus, Liz brought both grit and expertise to the table. In those early days, with the company’s first machine bought off eBay, she built and scaled everything by hand – bootstrapping her way through dozens of failed experiments. At one point, they even dug a trench in the dead of winter just to get water and electricity into the garage.

But she wasn’t alone. Her co-founder Sam Clark and early team believed in the long game, that building real physical infrastructure for a decarbonised world would require patience, scrappiness, and a completely different mindset from the software playbooks.

The other co-founder in the duo is not another scientist but a pragmatist with a background in operations delivering projects and events of national importance, he was able to lead the team to deliver Mevo’s FOAK factory in 8 months from breaking ground (an incredible achievement in hardware).

 “Hardware doesn’t pivot like software. Your first product is your factory. You can’t A/B test a silo”, Sam says.

The team’s relentless drive paid off. Material Evolution now operates its first full-scale facility, delivering to real customers and earning a seat at the table in the construction industry. The company is not just making better materials, but rewriting the economics of industrial production.

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The Real Cost Curve Advantage

The cement industry is a poster child for the legacy economy: extractive, centralised, carbon-intensive, and slow to change. Material Evolution represents the opposite. It’s decentralised, circular, and modular.

It’s a classic first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate hardware story, but it also breaks the mold. Their product slots seamlessly into existing supply chains and can scale modularly, with far greater capital efficiency than legacy cement infrastructure – bringing their first-of-a-kind factory online in just eight months. This is a wedge into a multi-trillion-dollar industry.

Sam puts it bluntly: “This isn’t just about sustainability. This is about material manufacturing at scale. You can’t software your way out of embodied carbon. You need materials that move at scale, that fit the existing ecosystem, and that are ready to go.”

Material Evolution’s product can now be used in roadways, housing, marine structures, and large-scale infrastructure. Their ultra-low carbon cement can substitute OPC in almost any application, with performance that meets standards across compressive strength, durability, and setting time. It even performs better in high sulfate and chloride environments, making it ideal for coastal and industrial settings.

And because the process works with multiple waste feedstocks, rather than relying on a single input like fly ash or limestone, it’s resilient, locally adaptable, and uniquely scalable in a fragmented global market.

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3 Lessons for Founders Building the Future

After years navigating the grind of hardware innovation, Liz and her team have three big lessons for anyone building solutions for the next economy:

1. Build for economics, not optics
   If your product only works when it’s subsidised, it won’t scale. Design something better, but make sure it’s also cheaper, faster and stronger.
   
   
2. Trust is the unlock
   In industrial sectors, relationships close the deal. Not pitch decks. Walk the factory floor. Know their constraints. Be part of their reality.
   
   
3. Backers should bring more than capital
   Choose investors who understand your timeline. You need believers who’ll get in the trenches with you, not investors that believe hardware is a SAAS play.

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