Meet the 33-year-old Canadian chemist and the renowned MIT professor who are building the ‘electric vehicle of cement making’
Leah Ellis and Yet-Ming Chiang
Photo courtesy The Engine
While Leah Ellis was earning her doctorate at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, she was part of a team that did battery research for Tesla. After she graduated, her budding career took an unusual turn.
“I could have gotten an easier job with my background in battery materials — a lot of my colleagues go work for Tesla or Apple. I could have done that, … and I would have made more money at first,” Ellis, 33, told CNBC by phone Wednesday.
Instead, Ellis applied for and won a prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship that granted her two years’ salary to work with whomever she wanted.
Ellis took her Ph.D. in electrochemistry and went to work for Yet-Ming Chiang, a renowned material sciences professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is also a serial clean-tech entrepreneur. Chiang co-founded companies such as American Superconductor Corporation, A123 Systems, Desktop Metal, Form Energy and 24M Technologies.
Now Ellis is working to scale up a new climate-conscious process of making cement, one powered with electrochemistry instead of fossil fuel-powered heat.
Making cement using electrochemistry was Chiang’s idea, Ellis told CNBC in Boston at the end of May. Ellis said she worked with Chiang in 2018, just after he had started Form Energy, a long-duration battery company, and he was thinking about the abundant intermittent energy that was being generated by renewable energy sources such as wind.
“Sometimes people will pay you to take energy off their hands,” Ellis told CNBC. “Instead of putting that energy in a battery, what if we can use this extra low-cost renewable energy to make something that would otherwise be very carbon-intensive? And then the first on the list of things that are carbon-intensive — it’s cement.”
Cement is a necessary ingredient in concrete, which is the cornerstone of global construction and infrastructure, because it’s cheap, strong and durable. Four billion metric tons, which is the equivalent of 50,000 fully loaded airplanes, of cement is produced each year, according to a 2023 report from management consulting company McKinsey. The value of the market was $323 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $459 billion by 2028, according to SkyQuest Technology Consulting.
Cement powder is conventionally made by crushing raw materials, including limestone and clay, mixing with ingredients such as iron and fly ash, and putting it all into a kiln that heats the ingredients up to about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. That process of making cement generates approximately 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which are a leading cause of global warming.
When Chiang had the idea to electrify cement manufacturing, he turned to Ellis. “He’s super busy, so he was like, ‘Go off and figure it out,'” Ellis told CNBC.
So she did.
In 2020, Ellis and Chiang co-founded Sublime Systems to refine and scale up the electrochemical process they created for making cement.
Sublime has raised $50 million from some leading clean-tech investors, including Chris Sacca’s LowerCarbon Capital and Boston-based, MIT spin-out venture firm The Engine; from Siam Cement Group, a leading cement and building materials company in Asia; and via a couple of grants from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, program.
Leah Ellis, CEO of Sublime Systems
Photo courtesy Summer Camerlo, Sublime Systems
Ellis likes to describe what they’re doing as developing the “electric vehicle of cement making.” An electric vehicle replaces a combustion engine with an electric motor, and that’s what Sublime Systems does in the cement-making process.
“I think for the layperson, it’s easiest for them to understand how we take that high-temperature, fossil-driven process and replace it with something that is powered by electrons. And we’re using electrons to push these chemical reactions,” Ellis told CNBC by phone Wednesday. “That happens at an ambient temperature below the boiling point of water,” she said, and that is a critical differentiator.
Ellis said she didn’t know much about cement when Chiang bade her to go figure out how to make low-carbon cement. She started by reading Wikipedia, and then textbooks. Then she worked with another Ph.D. student doing research that was later published in scientific journal articles on the topic. That led to the concept for what Sublime is doing now, and she’s continued to refine that concept ever since.
“And basically just haven’t stopped,” Ellis told CNBC. “It’s been five years.”
Bringing the ‘magic’ of chemistry to cement
Ellis has always been curious. “I grew up pretty nerdy, I guess, reading a lot of books,” she said. “I always had that thirst for knowledge and a sense of adventure.”
She also grew up in a religious household. Her father is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi from Texas, her mother grew up on a sheep farm in South Africa, and the two met when they were both in Israel. “Jerusalem has more than enough rabbis. So he moved to eastern Canada, where they don’t have a lot of rabbis,” Ellis told CNBC of her father’s move. Her family celebrated and encouraged having a robust intellectual life.
Leah Ellis, CEO of Sublime Systems, works in the cement lab.
Photo courtesy Leah Ellis
Ellis and one of her two younger sisters ended up getting their doctorates in chemistry.
“Both of us realize that chemistry is a very creative subject; it’s also a very difficult subject. And I think we both sort of gravitate to things that are challenging,” Ellis told CNBC.
When mastered, chemistry can be used to effect change. “It has a lot of creative power to make things happen in the real world,” Ellis said. “It’s almost like magic. If you work really hard on it, you can create things that make the world a better place.”
Battery scientists and cement producers have not historically worked together. “Cement typically sits in civil engineering, and battery science normally sits in chemistry or physics,” Ellis said. “They don’t go to the same conferences.”
But with Sublime Systems, Ellis and Chiang are bringing those two fields together.
That framework of using electrochemistry to drive reactions that once happened with very hot fossil fuel-powered reactions is not exclusive to cement.
“It’s a huge tool. I don’t think Sublime is the only one that’s applying electrochemistry to clean tech. I think the best way we have to get around fossil fuels is to use electrons,” Ellis told CNBC.
“The electrochemical way is often more efficient,” she said. “Heating things up to make them go is often not as efficient as electrochemistry, which is a bit more surgical, a bit more efficient — or at least can be more efficient with the right processes.”
That fundamental energy efficiency is why Chiang is confident in their solution.
“Decarbonizing cement production is going to be a very tough task. There will be numerous approaches, all of which have challenges and most of which deserve to be tested,” Chiang told CNBC. “I prefer to face our challenges because we see a pathway to complete decarbonization at cost parity with today’s cement while consuming the least amount of energy. In the long run, the lowest-energy process usually wins.”
Yet-Ming Chiang, professor of materials science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaks during the 2016 IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston, Texas, Feb. 26, 2016.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The cement industry needs to clean up shop
“On the whole, the industry is highly motivated to go green,” Mark Mutter, the founder of Jamcem Consulting, an independent cement industry consultancy, told CNBC. Motivations to go green are highest for producers located in parts of the world such as Europe, where there is a price on carbon dioxide emissions at around 80 euros (almost $88) per metric ton. That’s “a big financial penalty for producers and it gives them an incentive to invest” in green cement tech, Mutter told CNBC.
That’s one reason investors are putting money behind Sublime.
“Customers are lining up to partner with Sublime because they can supply fossil-free cement at a time when the rest of the industry are all struggling to hit emissions targets and comply with carbon tariffs,” Clay Dumas, partner at LowerCarbon Capital, told CNBC.
“For Lowercarbon, their omnipresence and medieval production techniques are precisely the qualities that make building materials such an irresistible opportunity,” Dumas told CNBC.
Some cement producers are looking at carbon capture technologies as a way to manage their greenhouse gas emissions. But “this is highly costly, and in some respects is just business as usual and burying the problem for future generations,” Mutter told CNBC.
Sublime is making clean cement without the expensive additive of carbon capture and storage technologies, which is attractive because it keeps costs low, said Katie Rae, CEO at The Engine. “Producing decarbonized cement directly, rather than doing carbon capture, drives both energy efficiency and eventual cost parity,” Rae told CNBC.
Dumas said Sublime has “the most elegant chemistry, which runs on electricity at ambient temperatures while emitting zero carbon. That means they have no need for big ovens or costly CO2-capture systems that would drive up capex.”
Siam Cement Group looks at thousands of companies and makes only “a few” investments a year, Tim McCaffery, a venture investor at SCG, told CNBC. For SCG, what’s attractive about Sublime is that it avoids the complicated and expensive carbon capture technology and works with existing infrastructure.
“We have seen that Sublime Systems could disrupt the industry. The company produces a cement at room temperature that can drop into the existing ready mix supply chain and meets American Society for Testing and Materials standards,” McCaffery told CNBC. American Society for Testing and Materials is the body that creates test standards and protocols that manufacturers use to test their materials against.
Climbing stairs, making solutions, moving forward
Sublime completed its pilot plant at the end of 2022 and spent a few months on quality control measures. Now, Ellis is focused on getting the product to partners, and the company hopes to do its first construction project by the end of the year. The next step is to go from the 100-ton pilot plant to a 30,000-ton-per-year demonstration plant.
While Sublime is just getting ramped up, Ellis knows speed is essential in the race to decarbonize. “My mission is to have a swift and massive impact on climate change,” she told CNBC in Boston.
Leah Ellis bikes in Africa.
Photo courtesy Scott Carmichael
It’s an audacious goal, and while Ellis has credentialed chemistry chops, this is her first time being the boss of a company.
“I suppose I am aware of my age. And I’m also humble about that. I’m a first-time founder. I’m a first-time CEO,” Ellis told CNBC. “I figure things out as I do them. And I’m really lucky to have great mentors and support and people who believe in me, and, I think, who recognize the fact that I have a lot of energy, and I have a lot of passion. And I’m going to work as hard as I can for as long as I can to make this happen.”
Ellis knows how to keep herself going, too. She makes sure she gets good sleep and she stays active. She’s run seven marathons. She’s a cycler, and once cycled across Africa in about four months with a group, a trip that averaged out to riding more than 60 miles a day. She also participates in a “fitness cult” that climbs the Harvard stadium stairs every Sunday.
“I’m not a fast runner at all. I’m not a fast cyclist either,” Ellis told CNBC. “I just know how to toe that effort line to just like maintain the same effort for a very long time, and to keep my own spirits up.”
For Chiang, building solutions keeps him moving forward.
“It’s been about 15 years since the words ‘climate change’ entered the lexicon. It’s been a gift, and very energizing, to have potentially impactful solutions to pursue, as opposed to sitting and fretting,” Chiang told CNBC.
“I believe climate change has pushed all of us into an extremely fertile, creative period that will be looked back on as a true renaissance. After all, we’re trying to re-invent the technological tools of the industrial revolution. There’s no shortage of great problems to work on! And time is short.”
A logo hangs on the building of the Beijing branch of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) on December 4, 2020 in Beijing, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Shares of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China’s largest contract chip maker, fell nearly 7% Friday after its first-quarter earnings missed estimates.
After trading on Thursday, the company reported a first-quarter revenue of $2.24 billion, up about 28% from a year earlier. Meanwhile, profit attributable to shareholders surged 162% year on year to $188 million.
However, both figures missed LSEG mean estimates of $2.34 billion in revenue and $225.1 million in net income, as well as the company’s own forecasts.
During an earnings call Friday, an SMIC representative said the earnings missed original guidance due to “production fluctuations” which sent blended average selling prices falling. This impact is expected to extend into the second quarter, they added.
For the current quarter, the chipmaker forecasted revenue to fall 4% to 6% sequentially. Gross margin is also expected to fall within the range of 18% to 20%, compared to 22.5% in the first quarter.
Still, the first quarter saw SMIC’s wafer shipments increase by 15% from the previous quarter and by about 28% year-on-year.
In the earnings call, SMIC attributed that growth to customer shipment pull in, brought by changes in geopolitics and increased demand driven by government policies such as domestic trade-in programs and consumption subsidies.
In another positive sign for the company, its first-quarter capacity utilization— the percentage of total available manufacturing capacity that is being used at any given time— reached 89.6%, up 4.1% quarter on quarter.
“SMIC’s nearly 90% utilization rate reflects strong domestic demand for semiconductors, likely driven by smartphone and consumer electronics production,” said Ray Wang, a Washington-based semiconductor and technology analyst, adding that the demand was also reflected in the company’s strong quarterly revenue growth.
Meanwhile, the company said in the earnings call that it is “currently in an important period of capacity construction, roll out, and continuously increasing market share.”
However, SMIC’s first-quarter research and development spending decreased to $148.9 million, down from $217 million in the previous quarter.
Amid increased demand, it will be crucial for SMIC to continue ramping up their capacity, Simon Chen, principal analyst of semiconductor manufacturing at Informa Tech told CNBC.
SMIC generates most of its revenue from older-generation semiconductors, often referred to as “mature-node” or “legacy” chips, which are commonly found in consumer electronics and industrial equipment.
The state-backed chipmaker is critical to Beijing’s ambitions to build a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain, with the government pumping billions into such efforts. Over 84% of its first-quarter revenue was derived from customers in China.
“The localization transformation of the supply chain has been strengthened, and more manufacturing demand has shifted back domestically,” a representative said Friday.
However, chip analysts say the chipmaker’s ability to increase capacity in advance chips — used in applications that demand higher levels of computing performance and efficiency at higher yields — is limited.
This is due to U.S.-led export controls, which prevent it from accessing some of the world’s most advanced chip-making equipment from the Netherlands-based ASML.
Nevertheless, the chipmaker appears to be making some breakthroughs. Advanced chips manufactured by SMIC have reportedly appeared in various Huawei products, notably in the Mate 60 Pro smartphone and some AI processors.
In the earnings call, the company also said it would closely monitor the potential impacts of the U.S.-China trade war on its demand, noting a lack of visibility for the second half of the year.
Phelix Lee, an equity analyst for Morningstar focused on semiconductors, told CNBC that the impacts of U.S. tariffs on SMIC are limited due to most of its revenue coming from Chinese customers.
While U.S. customers make up about 8-15% of revenue on a quarterly basis, the chips usually remain and are consumed in Chinese products and end users, he said.
“There could be some disruption to chemical, gas, and equipment supply; but the firm is working on alternatives in China and other non-U.S. regions,” he added.
SMIC’s Hong Kong-listed shares have gained over 32.23% year-to-date.
Close-up of a hand holding a cellphone displaying the Amazon Pharmacy system, Lafayette, California, September 15, 2021.
Smith Collection | Gado | Getty Images
Amazon is expanding its online pharmacy to fill prescription pet medications, the company announced Thursday.
The company said it has added “hundreds of commonly prescribed pet medications” to its U.S. site, ranging from flea and tick solutions to treatments for chronic conditions.
Prescriptions are purchased via Amazon’s storefront and must be approved by a veterinarian. Online pet pharmacy Vetsource will oversee the dispensing and delivery of medications, said Amazon, adding that items are typically delivered within two to six days.
Amazon launched its digital drugstore in 2020 with the added perk of discounts and free delivery for Prime members. The company has been working to speed up prescription shipments over the past year, bringing same-day delivery to a handful of U.S. cities. Last October, Amazon set a goal to make speedy medicine delivery available in nearly half of the U.S. in 2025.
The new pet medication offerings puts Amazon into more direct competition with online pet pharmacy Chewy, as well as Walmart, which offers pet prescription delivery.
Amazon Pharmacy is part of the company’s growing stable of healthcare offerings, which also includes One Medical, the primary care provider it acquired for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022. Amazon’s online pharmacy was born out of the company’s 2018 acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack.
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