Watt it Takes: Brimstone Co-Founder and CEO Cody Finke

Jul 23, 2025

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Cody Finke

Brimstone

Cody Finke is the Co-Founder and CEO of Brimstone, a company working on one of the most impactful decarbonization solutions for the industrial sector. Brimstone’s breakthrough process delivers multiple industrial materials, including Portland cement, Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCM) and Smelter-Grade Alumina.

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Emily spoke to Cody about his journey; from growing up in Seattle and Idaho to earning a PhD at Caltech and working in environmental research, where he learned the importance of developing solutions that can scale. That path ultimately led Cody to co-found Brimstone, a company that has raised over $60 million, and signed a partnership with Oklahoma company Dolese Bros. Co. to supply the materials for its commercial-scale plant.

Cody Finke is the co-founder and CEO of Brimstone, an Oakland-based company on a mission to transform heavy industry, starting with cement—a sector responsible for 7.5% of global CO2 emissions. He holds a BA with distinction in Chemistry from Carleton College and a Ph.D. from Caltech, where he focused on electrochemistry and industrial decarbonization. Following his Ph.D., Cody conducted postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a DOE-funded Cyclotron Road entrepreneurial fellow.

“Brimstone’s belief is you can't use subsidies in order to scale globally. You need to be able to stand on your own economic merits. And we've approached all of our fundraising and all of our economic decisions from that lens.”