Newlight Raises $9M to Cut Cargo Ship Fuel Use
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Newlight has raised $9 million in a Seed round backed by lomarlabs, BIRD Energy, Undeterred Capital, CiRi Ventures and Fusion VC.
The company works out of San Francisco, and it retrofits marine diesel engines to inject hydrogen alongside conventional fuel.
The proof came at sea rather than on a test bench. On September 1, 2026 the company reported results from an 8,500 nautical mile commercial voyage in which its hydrogen-hybrid energy system cut fuel use by 24% and carbon dioxide emissions by 28%. The system was installed on a 199 metre, 57,038 deadweight tonne Lomar Shipping bulk carrier that sailed from Singapore to Ghana.
Co-founders Haran Cohen Hillel and Evyatar Cohen lead the company, and the retrofit has now been shown to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by more than 20% on long-range commercial voyages.
The capital pays for engineering development of the high-throughput injection hardware, growth of the marine engineering and fluid dynamics teams, and open-ocean pilot validation trials on commercial container vessels.
Shipping is one of the harder sectors to decarbonise, which is part of why renewable energy investors have been circling retrofit approaches that work with engines already in the water.
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