Great question. We'd love to capture point-source CO2 from factory flue gas where it is orders of magnitude more concentrated (often >10%) than in air (~400ppm). And fundamentally, there is no reason our process cannot be applied for this type of CO2 capture. For now, we are choosing to focus on air for 2 reasons:

1) Market. Early buyers of CO2 credits are primarily looking to get very clean accounting of who gets credit for the CO2 removed, and will pay a premium for anyone who can do it. If a buyer (say, a software company) pays for a polluting chemical factory or power plant to capture some of its emissions, it requires complex multi-party contracts & the incentives between the parties are often conflicting. That being said, point-source CO2 removal is absolutely needed & a huge opportunity/problem and more work is needed from a technology/policy side.

2) The "extreme user" case. If we give 100% focus to solving the more challenging problem of removing CO2 from air, we may gain learnings & knowledge that will translate to an improved point-source capture process, whether from an energy/efficiency/cost perspective.

That's what most carbon capture tech seeks to do, this would be direct carbon capture from the air. You are completely correct in assuming this is highly inefficient. As long as we are still blasting new CO2 into the atmosphere, it will always be easier to capture it at the source. Direct air capture only becomes significant when we get access to enough clean energy to power the absurdly inefficient technology. Thermodynamically, even if you are capturing at max efficiency, it still sucks (something like 250kwh+ minimum to extract 1ton of CO2, not even close to reality). We need either abundant renewables or fusion/fission energy to make it viable.