Rise Reforming
<!-- hacklab:yc-profile -- YC company profile We turn waste gases into supply-secure chemicals Geopolitical conflicts and natural disasters frequently expose the vulnerability o…
About Rise Reforming
YC company profile
We turn waste gases into supply-secure chemicals
Geopolitical conflicts and natural disasters frequently expose the vulnerability of the American chemical industry. The reason? Production is centralized and fossil fuel-dependent. The solution? Localized production using an undervalued resource: biogas. The US produces enough biogas to make over $20 bn/y worth of chemicals, but 60% is wasted in low-margin applications or flared altogether.
Rise Reforming is commercializing a modular process to transform this underutilized biogas on-site into cheap, supply-secure chemicals. Our beachhead market is dimethyl ether (DME), used as an aerosol propellant and a low-carbon fuel additive in propane. Our target market is methanol: an established billion $ chemical and the future of low-carbon shipping.
We're doing our pilot project at a Chicagoland wastewater plant. This will be the first wastewater biogas-to-methanol demo in the Americas.
We're hiring for a senior chemical process engineer. Apply here: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/rise-reforming/jobs/wJ9Q9nv-senior-chemical-process-engineer
- YC batch: Summer 2026
- Founded: 2024
- Team size: 4
- Location: Chicago, IL
- Country: US
- Status: Active
- Industry: Industrials
- Stage: Early
- Tags: Hard Tech, Smart Waste Management, Alternative Fuels, Renewable Energy, ClimateTech
- YC partner: Jared Friedman
Founders
George Rose — Founder/CEO
Co-founder and CEO at Rise Reforming (S26). Previously @ Nexamp, Highland Electric Fleets, Mantel Capture, GenH. Background in Molecular Engineering @ UChicago.
Lucas Zubillaga — Founder/CTO
Co-Founder & CTO at Rise Reforming (S26). Double B.Sc. in Molecular Engineering and Physics from the University of Chicago. Prev: nuclear waste management at Argonne National Laboratory, offshore wind at Avangrid/Iberdrola.
Led the design, procurement, construction, and operation of a bench-scale reforming unit with controls.
Also have a Spotify playlist with 200k+ saves. Check it out at: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3rV2gyEKHxixpKa3IDQLvF?si=3458c33e03e84738&nd=1&dlsi=d0006826be884d
Jona van Oord — Founder/COO
Environmentalist turned engineer. Plan on spending the rest of my life building hardware to address the climate disaster :)
Co-Founder and COO @ Rise Reforming (S26), Molecular Engineering @ UChicago
Source: Y Combinator · Retrieved 2026-11-02. Company information is self-reported on YC.