FluoRok raises $30m Series A led by Orano Venture Fund to build HF-free fluorochemical demonstrator plants

FluoRok, the University of Oxford spinout that makes fluorochemicals without hydrogen fluoride, has closed a $30m (£22.8m) Series A. The oversubscribed round was led by Orano Venture Fund and its manager, Supernova Invest. The cash is meant to take the four-year-old company from pilot production to its first demonstrator plants, the stage where most chemistry start-ups either prove their economics or stall.

Bidra Innovation Ventures is the one new institutional investor. The University of Oxford came back in, as did BGF, GGF, Volta Energy Technologies and Oxford Science Enterprises, the university's venture investor, while CPI Enterprises, EverQuest Capital Partners, WS Investment and a group of angels also taking part. The company said the round came in above its target.

Who is backing it, and why that matters

The cap table now has a strong industrial flavour. The lead investor belongs to Orano, the French nuclear fuel cycle group, and is managed on its behalf by Supernova Invest, a European deeptech investor with about €800m under management. Bidra is the venture arm of Morocco's OCP Group and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, and it invests in agriculture, industrials and mining.

Florian de Beauchaine, investment manager at Orano Venture Fund and Supernova Invest, put the case in terms of safety and supply.

"FluoRok has already shown its process works at pilot scale, and taking hydrogen fluoride out of fluorochemical production tackles a safety and supply problem the whole industry shares."

For Bidra, the attraction is breadth. Abhiram Kannan, its head of investment for industrials and mining, said FluoRok's process "isn't tied to one product", because one chemistry can serve drug and crop-protection makers as well as battery suppliers.

Roughly $1.3m of the round is grant money from Innovate UK, channelled through its Investor Partnerships programme. Before this raise FluoRok had taken in about $14m of equity, including a £7.7m seed round led by BGF in September 2024, plus more than $13m of UK and European public funding. That public tally includes two DRIVE35 grants this year, worth £1.5m and £750k, for HF-free lithium-ion electrolyte salt production, and €2.5m from the EIC Accelerator in July.

A 250-year-old process with a choke point

Fluorine turns up in roughly one in five medicines and one in three agrochemicals, according to the company, and in the electrolyte of nearly every lithium-ion cell. Almost all of it reaches industry by the same route. High-purity fluorspar is treated with acid to make hydrogen fluoride, which is then used to build other fluorinated compounds. The method dates back around 250 years.

HF is among the most dangerous chemicals in industrial use. Plants that handle it need specialised containment, which drives up capital costs, slows permitting and narrows the list of places where new capacity can go. Supply of the high-grade fluorspar feedstock is also concentrated in a handful of countries, with China the largest. For lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6), the standard electrolyte salt in batteries, industry estimates put China's share of output at roughly 85 to 90 per cent.

FluoRok's route skips HF entirely. It uses mechanical activation and base chemistry, rather than acid and high temperatures, to free fluorine from fluoride minerals. The process can run on lower-grade mined fluoride or on fluoride recovered from industrial waste, and the company says it works with standard, off-the-shelf industrial equipment. The science comes from the lab of co-founder Véronique Gouverneur, an Oxford chemistry professor who specialises in fluorine, and was published in Science in 2023. Chief executive Gabriele Pupo, a former postdoctoral researcher in Oxford's chemistry department, founded the company in 2022.

Where the $30m goes

The money will pay for demonstrator facilities for two product lines: fluorinating reagents and battery electrolyte salts. It will also fund more hires, customer validation at industrial scale and new commercial partnerships. The company says it has completed pilot qualifications and has commercial interest from prospective buyers.

"This funding will ensure FluoRok can swiftly move from start-up to scale-up and take a further step towards becoming a large-scale industrial manufacturer," Pupo said.

The first markets are inorganic fluorides for pharmaceutical and agrochemical makers, and LiPF6 for battery supply chains. Fluoropolymer recycling is a third line the company has named. On the battery side, FluoRok signed a letter of intent in December 2025 with electrolyte maker Green Energy Origin aimed at the European battery supply chain, though turning that into orders will depend on product qualification and commercial terms.

The competition is large and established. Orbia's Koura is building a 10,000-tonne LiPF6 plant in Louisiana, and Chinese producers such as Do-Fluoride, Tinci and Capchem, along with South Korea's Foosung, already supply most of the market at scale. FluoRok's case rests on lower capital costs and the freedom to site plants closer to European and UK customers, without the HF handling that incumbents have built their operations around.

The demonstrator plants will be the first real test of that case. They need to show that a process proven at pilot scale in Oxford can make battery-grade and pharma-grade material in volume, at a price buyers will accept.