Rise Reforming joins YC to turn wastewater biogas into chemicals on-site

Why it matters

Rise Reforming's pilot will test whether distributed chemical plants can make stranded biogas valuable without the cost and infrastructure of centralized production.

George Rose, Lucas Zubillaga and Jona van Oord have brought Rise Reforming into Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch as Rise Reforming moves its waste-gas chemistry out of the lab and into a wastewater treatment plant.

The three founders met as molecular engineering undergraduates at the University of Chicago. Their current plan is to install modular chemical-production systems beside wastewater plants, farms and landfills, converting biogas where it is produced instead of shipping the gas to a large centralized facility. Rise Reforming is starting with dimethyl ether, or DME, while also developing routes to methanol and dimethyl carbonate.

The YC launch marks a commercial test for a project that began as a student team's attempt to process discarded plastic. Rose first approached Zubillaga during finals week in spring 2023 with an idea for reducing methane emissions, according to the University of Chicago. Van Oord later joined them, and the founders developed Rise Reforming through an engineering capstone and the university's Polsky Center.

Rise Reforming shifted its feedstock toward biogas in 2025. That pivot removed an early processing step because biogas already arrives as a mixture dominated by methane and carbon dioxide, while plastic must first be converted into gas. It also gave the founders a clearer customer: operators sitting on a steady stream of gas that may otherwise be flared or directed into low-value uses.

A pilot beside the gas source

Rise Reforming says its pilot container has arrived at a Chicagoland wastewater plant, beginning construction on a system expected to go online in 2027. Y Combinator describes the project as a wastewater-biogas-to-methanol demonstration and lists Rise Reforming as a four-person team.

Wastewater plants are the founders' first target because their biogas volumes can match a modular plant better than the output of a large landfill. The equipment is designed to fit inside a shipping container, letting Rise Reforming add production capacity in increments and avoid transporting untreated biogas. Rise Reforming says dairy farms are its second target, while landfills become attractive once Rise Reforming reaches mass production and can deploy at higher volumes.

Rise Reforming says its proof-of-concept system produced syngas stably for more than 1,800 hours before the founders prepared the pilot design. That figure remains self-reported. Rise Reforming has not published the pilot's planned production capacity, conversion yield, uptime target or independently validated cost data.

Those measurements will determine whether the container is a chemical plant or an expensive way to avoid a flare. Small installations lose some of the scale advantages available to conventional chemical facilities, so Rise Reforming must save enough on feedstock, transportation and construction to offset the cost of operating many distributed units.

The founders say they have signed a binding biogas supply agreement, several memoranda of understanding with producers and a conditional DME offtake agreement for the first commercial unit. Rise Reforming has not named the counterparties. The conditional structure also leaves the purchase dependent on milestones that are not public.

YC as a sales program

The YC slot matters because Rise Reforming needs more than reactor chemistry. It needs purchase orders and a commercial operation around its process.

That focus matters because the science is only one part of deploying hardware inside regulated industrial sites. Rise Reforming will also need host agreements, permits, reliable feedstock specifications, product buyers and financing structures that work for customers accustomed to proven equipment.

Rise Reforming says it closed a $650,000 pre-seed round in March 2026 for proof-of-concept work, intellectual property filings and pilot planning. The University of Chicago says the founders have raised more than $1.7 million in total. Rise Reforming's investor list includes Y Combinator, the 776 Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, LongJump VC, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, John Edwardson and David Wells. Rise Reforming has not published a valuation or identified a lead for the pre-seed.

The founders had already used competitions and university programs to finance technical development. Rise Reforming, then working under a plastic-waste thesis, won the U.S. Department of Energy's 2024 EnergyTech University Prize. Rose later became a 776 Foundation Climate Fellow, and Rise Reforming moved its research work into an Illinois Institute of Technology incubator lab in December 2025. Nina Kritikos joined as founding process engineer.

Zubillaga brings experience from nuclear waste management at Argonne National Laboratory and offshore wind work at Avangrid/Iberdrola. He led the design, procurement, construction and operation of Rise Reforming's bench-scale unit, according to YC. Rose previously worked at Nexamp, Highland Electric Fleets, Mantel Capture and GenH.

A market with operating competitors

Rise Reforming is entering a field where distributed methane conversion already has funded and commercial participants. M2X Energy markets mobile systems that convert methane into methanol at the source. Maverick Synfuels offers skid-mounted plants for methane-rich feeds, including biogas and landfill gas. Oberon Fuels is active in renewable DME, including propellant and LPG-adjacent markets.

Rise Reforming is betting that smaller containerized units, raw-biogas handling and a product roadmap spanning DME, methanol and DMC can open sites that larger systems struggle to serve. DME gives the founders an initial route into aerosol propellants and propane blending, while methanol offers a much larger chemicals and shipping market.

The immediate hurdle is narrower: make the Chicagoland pilot run on live, variable biogas and produce material that a buyer will accept at a workable cost. Rise Reforming says its process can compete with petrochemical DME and low-cost green methanol and DMC. Without plant-scale performance and pricing data, that remains a target rather than an established advantage.

The founders have spent three years narrowing the problem, moving from plastic waste to a feedstock that reaches the reactor with one less processing step. YC gives them a network for the next narrowing exercise: finding which biogas sites can support a modular chemical plant and which chemical gives the first unit a financeable customer contract.