On a Brooklyn bar top a few years ago, a clear liquid in a simple bottle looked like any other premium spirit. The label, however, made an audacious claim: this vodka was made from air.

Behind that bottle was Gregory Constantine, a British-born entrepreneur with a Harvard MBA, and his cofounder, chemist Stafford Sheehan, a Yale Ph.D. Their company, Air Company (often stylized as Air Co.), was built around a radical premise: capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into useful products. The ultimate goal was aviation fuel that could help decarbonize one of the hardest-to-abate sectors on earth. But they knew they couldn’t start there.

Instead of chasing investors with a pitch deck full of lab diagrams and distant revenue projections, Constantine asked a more pragmatic question: while we work on the big idea, what can we make and sell now?

That question would lead to a line of consumer products, a wave of media attention, and eventually a $65 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop and scale carbon-derived fuel. The path from cocktail bars to military airfields is a case study in how ambitious climate-tech founders can use near-term products to finance long-term breakthroughs.

The science at the core of Air Company’s work is a form of carbon conversion. In simple terms, the company captures CO2—sourced from industrial emitters or directly from the air—and combines it with hydrogen produced via electrolysis of water using renewable electricity. Using a proprietary catalyst and reactor system, they convert that mixture into alcohols and hydrocarbons. One of the first outputs they mastered was ethanol, the same alcohol found in spirits and many consumer products.

Sheehan’s breakthrough was figuring out how to make high-purity ethanol from captured CO2 in a way that could be scaled. Constantine saw the commercial potential. Premium spirits are a high-margin category, consumers are increasingly climate-conscious, and the story—vodka made from air—was irresistible to the media. It was the perfect showcase product.

The result was Air Vodka, marketed as the world’s first carbon-negative spirit. The company emphasized that for every bottle produced, more CO2 was removed from the atmosphere than emitted across the process, thanks to renewable power and carbon capture. Bartenders in trendsetting cities began pouring it. Articles followed, praising both the taste and the technology. The bottle became a talking point in climate circles and cocktail lounges alike.

Air Company didn’t stop at vodka. Once they had a reliable stream of CO2-derived ethanol, they expanded into other high-value consumer products that could use the same base ingredient. They launched a unisex fragrance, positioning it as a luxury product with a climate-positive twist. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and demand for sanitizers exploded, they quickly pivoted part of their production to make hand sanitizer from captured carbon as well, donating and selling it to hospitals and frontline organizations.

Internally, Constantine and Sheehan were clear: these products were never the endgame. They were proof points—ways to demonstrate that their technology worked outside the lab, build brand recognition, and, crucially, generate revenue and investor confidence. The vodka and fragrance were, in effect, stepping stones to jet fuel.

This strategy echoes a pattern seen in other transformative companies. Tesla began with expensive sports cars before moving toward mass-market vehicles, using early profits and prestige to fund the development of cheaper models. Amazon started with books before becoming the “everything store.” Google’s advertising engine financed its moonshots in autonomous vehicles and other frontier technologies. In each case, a focused, commercially viable first product underwrote a far more ambitious vision.

For Air Company, the vision was sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, made from captured CO2. Aviation accounts for roughly 2 to 3 percent of global CO2 emissions, and demand for air travel is expected to grow. Batteries are too heavy for long-haul flights, and hydrogen infrastructure is nascent. That leaves SAF—drop-in fuels that can work with existing aircraft and fueling systems—as one of the most promising near-term solutions.

After several years of selling consumer products and refining their technology, Air Company began to attract serious climate-tech investors. The company raised multiple funding rounds, ultimately securing more than $100 million from backers that included major venture firms and strategic partners in energy and aviation. With that capital, they scaled up from lab reactors to pilot and demonstration plants capable of producing larger volumes of fuel.