• HydroGraph promotes itself as a leader of the so-called “graphene age”, boasting of producing the “most powerful graphene in the industry”, with 20–50nm particle sizes and >99% purity. In reality, it has produced less than 200kg ever, and generated sales of only $6k in 2024.
• HydroGraph’s fully diluted market capitalization exceeded ~$1.2 billion (CAD), and shares are up close to +1000% in one month on the back of an organized paid promotion campaign. Since 2023, HydroGraph has spent ~6x more on promotion, travel, and “professional fees” than on R&D.
  • Often without disclosure, paid promotion includes CEO.ca, Emerging Growth, Planet MicroCap, Jay Taylor Media, Darrow, and Metals Investor Forum.
  • Two PR firms, hired by HydroGraph, published case studies bragging how they manufactured hype around HG.
• HydroGraph is the latest in a long line of graphene promotions. Zentek, GMG, Versarien, Haydale, and Applied Graphene all sold the same dream of trillion-dollar graphene markets, fueled by endless promotional announcements. These promotes all failed to scale, diluted heavily, and had average stock price declines of 92% from peak. HydroGraph is running the same playbook.
• HydroGraph’s early backers include some of Canada’s most notorious microcap financiers including the DesLauriers twins, Hubert Barry Hemsworth, and PowerOne Capital (linked to convicted pump-and-dumper Morrie Tobin). These players all have track records of 90–100% shareholder wipeouts.
• HydroGraph has ~60M in-the-money warrants representing >$150M of paper gains. Typically, once a promote has run its course, insiders cash out and leave retail investors holding the bag.
• HydroGraph’s loudest promoter is Canadian financier Kevin Bambrough, who claims the idea originated from his son. His son previously worked at PowerOne Capital, a shop notorious for its long association with penny stock promotions.
  • PowerOne insiders helped HydroGraph raise millions, and they received large blocks of shares in return, likely at average prices <$0.20/share. If they’re still holding, at current prices they’d be sitting on >$10 million in profits.
• HydroGraph’s CEO Kjirstin Breure lacks any real operational experience in the graphene industry or in any industry.
  • Breure has held various titles at HydroGraph, including CEO, COO, President, and Director, but her actual involvement has always been in marketing and investor relations.
  • Breuer appears to have fabricated her CV, with experience listed in executive positions which were actually IR and marketing roles. For example, she claimed to work for Omada Technology Systems as a consultant, then later called it IR, and eventually branded herself as COO. Omada was a one-man software company that shut down without releasing any products. Omada also had ties to Harold Davidson, the co-founder of HydroGraph.
  • Breur’s LinkedIn profile claims she previously worked as a Portfolio Manager at a company called “Leona”, but we couldn’t find evidence of this company existing. Coincidentally, Leona is Breuer’s middle name, and an early filing stated that she was a “Digital Advertiser at Leona Studios” during the same time she claimed to be a portfolio manager.
• HydroGraph’s CFO and CAO left in 2024 and were replaced with a part-time CFO-for-hire with ties to other failing micro-caps.
• In 2025, HydroGraph’s independent Chair resigned, leaving CEO Kjirstin Breure to fill the role of both CEO and Chair.
• HydroGraph has repeatedly promoted partnerships which fail to produce sales and often go completely silent following the initial announcement.
  • VolfPack Energy has been hyped as a “large energy storage” partner which HydroGraph claimed would begin production in 2025. It is actually a pre-seed Sri Lankan startup that doesn’t expect to start pilot production until 2028–29. Volfpack, whose website states they’re willing to “partner with anyone”, is so early in its business cycle that they’re unable to pay for a lease for their production facility and have resorted to DIY methods to create a small room for their battery assembly. Pictures of facilities included below.
  • Hawkeye Bio is a partnership that HydroGraph has recycled as a new opportunity generated $2.5k of sales in 2021 and has not progressed since.
  • EMP Shield was supposed to develop electromagnetic shielding solutions using HG’s graphene.
  • Bazalt Holdings was a licensing deal from 2020 that yielded few thousand in one-off sales and has quietly fizzled.
• HydroGraph has a long history of broken promises.
  • The company first guided to commercialization for 2022. They then pushed the goalposts to 2023, then to 2024, and still have yet to deliver.
  • In May 2024, management claimed “multiple large contracts” were imminent. 2024 revenue was $6,172.
  • In mid-2024, they claimed EPA approval was “six months away”. It’s been 12 months and still no EPA approval.
  • After eight years, HydroGraph still has no approvals, no customers, no scale, and no credible path forward.
• HydroGraph touts its “verification” by The Graphene Council to confer legitimacy. The Graphene Council is a for-profit trade group, owned and operated by a career consultant with no scientific credentials or scientific background.
  • The “verification” program itself is a paid membership that has certified only a few companies, several of which are now bankrupt or defunct. The Graphen Council “verified” peers like Versarien, which collapsed and became a pennystock.
  • An industry insider told us that getting a verification costs $50k-$60k and there is no threshold for passing or failing. He says: “They just put the results into a report and send it back. There’s no classification.”
• HydroGraph licenses a detonation process from Kansas State University, and claims its reactor design can produce 10MT annually. In reality, the entire company has produced less than 0.2MT total over five years.
  • Despite its production shortcomings, HydroGraph’s fully diluted market cap is double that of proven peer NanoXplore (~$500M), which has a capacity of 4,000 MT annually and generates $100M+ in revenue. Investors are paying unicorn prices for what a former HG employee describe as a “science project”.
• Industry experts and former insiders told us the probability of success was “zero”. Insiders confirmed that the machines require constant downtime and maintenance, making scaling impossible.
• To achieve commercial scale, HydroGraph requires EPA approval and without it, they are restricted to selling small R&D batches. Former employees told us approval is at least 5–10 years away.
  • We believe HydroGraph could get approval within the next 2 years, but with onerous restrictions on use cases and customers. Either way, the timeline for EPA approval is uncertain and profitability is a pipe dream.
• FDA approval for food and beverage packaging “may never” occur due to nanoparticle toxicity: HydroGraph’s 20–50nm particles are ~1,900x smaller than approved peers, raising inhalation and organ accumulation risks. Without regulatory clearance, HydroGraph’s supposed trillion-dollar TAM is a fantasy.
  • HydroGraph claims to be the “most cost-effective producer” in the industry, but insiders reveal that this plan ignores critical costs like acetylene production, compression, transport, and safety infrastructure. Competitor NanoXplore sells exfoliate graphene for $10/kg, while HydroGraph claims its graphene will cost $200-250/kg. At the same time, HydroGraph insiders estimate the actual cost of production at $500–800/kg!
• Hydrograph’s product has no real market. The battery market is already locked up by cheaper proven solutions like carbon black and carbon nanotubes. At the same time, potentially big markets like concrete, coatings, and composites are incredibly price sensitive and rely on penny-per-kg additives, making Hydrograph’s $200/kg graphene a non-starter.
• The economics are equally broken. We estimate Hydrograph’s absolute cost floor to be ~$50/kg with $200–250/kg selling prices, versus entrenched competitors at $1–3/kg for carbon black, $20–50/kg for carbon nanotubes, and <$10/kg for carbon fiber. With graphene costing an order-of-magnitude more, it’s uneconomic. Even if it has performance advantages in some applications, the high cost means it will never have meaningful market share.
• HydroGraph appears to be misrepresenting its product to investors. Hydrograph claims to produce “100% crystalline” and “100% SP2 bonded” graphene. We spoke to an industry expert with a PhD in nanomaterials, who said that this is a scientific impossibility since true SP2 requires single-layer graphene while their own filings admit an average of six layers. The most precise method to produce single-layer graphene is chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and even CVD doesn’t produce 100% SP2 bonded graphene because of the presence of defects. Further, HydroGraph’s own filings admit that their graphene is not single-layer, but rather an average of six layers.
• Hydrograph claims its manufacturing process can be scaled by replicating their small explosive chambers, but each run requires venting flammable gas, scraping soot, and resealing which is a manual, unsafe, and costly process. Also, the explosive production process causes extensive wear and tear, leading to downtime, and shortening the reactor lifespan to well below the 20-year life implied by HydroGraph. This means the true CapEx and OpEx are far higher than the company claims.
• HydroGraph claims to be the only producer of “high-purity graphene”. However, UK-based Levidian Nanosystems claims to produce >99% pure graphene, has real customers (ADNOC, United Utilities), reputable investors (Baker Hughes, Abu Dhabi sovereign fund), and claims to have revenue of £10M in 2024.
• HydroGraph is audited by MNP LLP, a Canadian accounting firm notorious for rubber-stamping low-quality issuers and China-linked frauds, according to PCAOB records.

HydroGraph’s story is not new, it follows a well-worn Canadian microcap playbook: