Air, food, and water are the basic building blocks of life. Many of us stress over making healthy meals for our children and routinely drink eight cups of filtered water every day, but we forget about air. We’ve accepted that air pollution is normal and decided that daily discomfort for America’s 80 million+ asthma and allergy sufferers is okay.
But I refuse to accept this reality. I’ve struggled to breathe for as long as I can remember, and bet that we’d all care more about air quality if we better understood the consequences of polluted air on our health.
Air pollutant levels can be two to five times higher inside our homes due to a build-up of things like dust, mold, chemicals and allergens. I know firsthand how these pollutants can make each breath a struggle, but research has also linked polluted air to poor cognitive function, dementia and a host of other health concerns.
My father, Dr. Yogi Goswami, is a renowned renewable energy scientist, and he began studying air purification technology because he saw me struggling with asthma and allergies as a young child. Industry-standard HEPA filters, which haven’t evolved since the 1940s, weren’t helping me, and he knew there had to be a better solution. His concern for me — coupled with his experience solving tough problems in solar energy — set him on a 20-year mission to create a clean air technology that really works. I’ve spent much of my adult life, first watching him, and later working with him to develop something that would fundamentally change the way we think about air.
He developed Molekule’s patented technology, Photo Electrochemical Oxidation (PECO), to destroy pollutants on a molecular level. PECO actually breaks down pollutants like bacteria, mold, airborne chemicals, formaldehyde, and allergens — including pollutants like VOCs, which are 1,000 times smaller than what a traditional HEPA filter can catch. This is a complete departure from other air purifiers on the market today, which simply trap some, but not all, pollutants on a filter where they can continue to accumulate, multiply and get released back into the air. Molekule air purifiers actually clean the air, and we’re constantly innovating and improving upon our product. We’ve already improved our filters twice since launching, and we run a dedicated research and development lab because we’re rooted in science.
Since launching our flagship product two years ago, the customer feedback has been inspiring. We’ve heard from California residents who say they wouldn’t have survived last year’s wildfires without Molekule, and we’ve talked to parents who finally have a way to help their kids breathe without discomfort through the night. With $25M in new financing and the support of Foundry Group, Crosslink Capital, Uncork Capital and TransLink Capital, we’re more determined than ever to help people around the world breathe clean air.
We’ll use our new financing to expand our product line, scale manufacturing so we can keep up with customer demand, and grow our team. Thanks to our customers, investors and insanely talented team, we’ve already experienced incredible growth over the past year, but we’re just getting started. The applications for PECO technology extend well beyond the Molekule you know today.
We believe that polluted air is the human health epidemic no one is talking about, and it’s time to change that. There are billions of people around the world who need relief, and we’ve never felt more optimistic about Molekule’s role in solving this problem.
