Robert Niven

Robert Niven is the founder of CarbonCure Technologies. He currently serves as the CEO & President of XLYNX Materials, a specialty chemicals company that produces diazirine crosslinking solutions for advanced manufacturing.

Rob founded CarbonCure in 2012 with the simple goal of making concrete sustainability both profitable and easy for the industry. Rob stepped down as CarbonCure’s Chief Executive in 2025 but he continues to champion the company and provide counsel to its leadership. During his 13 years as CEO, CarbonCure commercially launched its technologies in North America and soon reached global scale, with hundreds of systems licensed to concrete producers across more than two dozen countries, making it the global leader in carbon utilization tech for the concrete industry. This worldwide deployment has resulted in millions of truckloads of lower carbon concrete and hundreds of thousands of metric tons of embodied carbon savings.

Under Rob’s leadership, CarbonCure won numerous international awards honouring the company’s leadership in sustainability, innovation and technology development. This included recognition as Cleantech Group's 2020 North American Company of the Year, the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE grand prize in 2021, a Governor General’s Innovation Award in 2022, and induction into the Cleantech Hall of Fame after ranking among the top companies in the Global Cleantech 100 for seven consecutive years. In addition, Rob’s legacy of innovation and environmental impact has been honoured by Caldwell Partners’ Top 40 Under 40 in Canada, Maclean’s The Power List and The Independent’s Climate 100 List.

Rob holds an MSc in Environmental Engineering from McGill University and a BSc in Ch​​emistry from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. In his spare time, he is an avid outdoors enthusiast and devotes his time to nature conservation and community projects.