InventWood

InventWood makes SUPERWOOD, a densified wood that is stronger than steel at a sixth of the weight, fire-resistant, and durable enough for structural and exterior use. Steel and concrete are among the largest sources of carbon emissions on earth, and there has never been a material that could displace them without asking a builder to accept less: less strength, less span, less life out of the building.

Wood grown into a beam stores the carbon it took up. Densify it until it outperforms the steel it replaces and the arithmetic of a building inverts, from a carbon debt to a carbon store, without redrawing the design. Turning that result out of a lab and into a mill running at commercial scale is the hard part, and it is the part InventWood has done.