Heirloom

Shashank Samala grew up in Southeast India, where he witnessed climate change's direct impact on communities. He co-founded and served as VP of Product at Tempo Automation, a PCB manufacturing startup, before becoming an Entrepreneur in Residence at Carbon180, a nonprofit focused on carbon removal strategy. Samala co-founded Heirloom in 2020 to commercialize enhanced rock weathering for direct air capture and leads the company as CEO. In 2023, Heirloom opened the first commercial direct air capture facility in the United States, located in Tracy, California.

Noah McQueen was pursuing a doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania under Professor Jennifer Wilcox — who later became head of the DOE's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management — when he co-founded Heirloom in 2020. His PhD thesis proposed the scientific basis for Heirloom's approach of accelerating the natural carbonation of minerals to sequester CO2. As Head of Research, McQueen leads Heirloom's materials science and process optimization, translating the thermochemical cycling of limestone into a scalable, low-cost carbon removal pathway.

Zack Bloom co-founded Heirloom in 2020 alongside Shashank Samala and Noah McQueen. Bloom brings a technology and software product background to the founding team, complementing the carbon chemistry and operational expertise of his co-founders. His specific prior roles before Heirloom are not widely documented in public sources. He contributed to establishing the company and its early strategic direction as one of the first direct air capture startups to reach commercial deployment in the United States.