alcemy

alcemy (legal entity Alcemy GmbH, Berlin) develops software that applies statistics, computer science and machine learning to predict the compressive strength and other quality properties of cement and concrete. The company offers two products covering the value chain: one for cement plants and one for ready-mix concrete plants. In the cement plant, the software continuously analyses quality-relevant data from chemistry, mineralogy and grain-size distribution, produces forecasts of quality parameters and calculates target values (for example the fineness to be achieved by the cement mill and cement and concrete recipes) that are fed back automatically into the process. According to a partner description, reliable recommendations are computed within 20-40 minutes and passed to plant staff for implementation.

For ready-mix concrete producers, alcemy extends monitoring to delivery on the construction site, using existing mixing-plant data supplemented by IoT sensors installed on truck mixers (digital water meter, magnetic sensor, oil pressure sensor and telemetry unit) to monitor the consistency of fresh concrete in real time. The stated purpose is to let producers step-wise reduce clinker content and produce CO2-reduced cements and concretes while maintaining quality, avoiding over- and under-strength, and lowering energy and raw material use. The company reports emissions reductions of up to 65 per cent with its software (2024 press coverage) and up to 50 per cent CO2 savings versus the predecessor product (2022 release); the method has been patented for cement producers and, as of the partner description, was in the patenting process for concrete producers.

Founding story

Leopold Spenner grew up around the cement industry in Erwitte, where his family has worked in cement and concrete for close to 100 years, and became focused on decarbonisation after the EU Emissions Trading Scheme was introduced in 2005. He concluded that producing low-clinker cements required data-driven control technology, and met Robert Meyer - who had helped build the machine learning team at Flixbus - at the Entrepreneur First programme, leading to the founding of alcemy.

Business model

B2B SaaS sold to cement and ready-mix concrete producers, per Startbase's classification of the company as a SaaS, B2B business.

Traction

In 2021 the company and its customers reduced 80,000 tonnes of CO2 (2022 Series A release). By April 2024 alcemy reported deployment at a third of German cement plants plus six other countries; the company website reports 41+ cement plants, 160+ concrete plants and 17+ countries. Customer and partner references include Spenner Zement, Titan America (Medley plant, Florida), Molins and TITAN. The founders have stated a goal of saving at least 100 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030 with customers.

Latest developments

The company announced an alcemy Foundation Partnership via a press release on its website. Following the July 2024 financing, alcemy began US activities with its AI-powered quality control software at Titan's Medley cement plant in Florida, where Titan reported improved cement quality characteristics and conditions to lower its clinker factor within less than a year.