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🦜 30 Biodiversity Startups to Watch, according to VCs
VC funding in nature tech startups increased by 18%, from $1.56bn in 2022 to $1.85bn in 2023.
And the momentum continues into 2024 with NatCap ($10M Series A), goodcarbon (€5.25 million) and Earthshot Labs ($5.5M) just some of the startups announcing fresh funding.
Here at ClimateHack, we caught up with 7 VCs investing in NatureTech to hear which startups have caught their attention. Solutions include:
🔍 Technologies leveraging environmental data solutions and nature mapping data offering improved MRV for biodiversity.
🌲 Agroforestry systems and soil carbon audits accelerating biodiversity restoration and preservation.
🐝 Pollination activity and sustainable livestock management driving agricultural efficiency and environmental stewardship.
Here’s what they said:
🇸🇪 Terralabs
Recent Funding: €4M
CEO and Founder: Peder Stahle
What: Satellite forest tracking and AI/ML-layer to analyse, detect changes & generate real-time alerts with actionable insights for forest managers.
Total Funding: $11M
Founders: Sonja Stuchtey, Martin Stuchtey
What: Creating a new asset class for regeneration at scale: Nature Equity.
Total Funding: £13M
CEO: Sebastian Leape
What: Providing nature intelligence, supporting companies to measure, report, and act on nature. Spawned out of Oxford University.
🇫🇷 Iceberg Data Lab*
Recent Funding: $10M
Founders: Pierre-Olivier Haye, Matthieu Maurin
What: Providing quality environmental data solutions to financial institutions, helping them report and manage environmental impact of their portfolios.
🇬🇧 Agricarbon
Total Funding: $18.9M
Founders: Annie Leeson, Stuart Arbuckle
What: Providing accurate soil carbon stock audits based on high-intensity direct sampling, supporting adoption of soil carbon sequestration.
🇬🇧 Verna Earth
Total Funding: $2.72M
Co-Founders: Matthew Brown, Rafi Cohe
What: Helping local planning authorities deliver better environmental outcomes in a more efficient way.
Total Funding: $2.85M
Founders: Murray Collins, Ed Mitchard
What: Providing high quality nature mapping data on forest coverage and carbon storage for nature-based solutions developers and investors, bringing transparency and integrity to the carbon markets.
🇩🇪 Ruumi
Stage: Seed
Founders: Johannes Scheibe Nørgaard, Daniel Hofmann, Paddy Long
What: Improving soil health, only occurs through improving biodiversity above and below ground, Ruumi does by keeping livestock moving and validated nature improvements with earth observation.
🇬🇧 Elaniti
Founder: Scott Jarrett
Stage: Pre-Seed
What: Mapping and understanding the functional relationships in the soil microbiome. With more life in a teaspoon of soil, biodiversity starts in the soil.
🇬🇧 Olombria
Total Funding: $300K+
CEO and Founder: Tashia Tucker
What: Showing that improving insect activity, increases pollination rates, results in direct lift in yield and profitability for farmers.
🇺🇸 Propagate*
Total Funding: $11.6M
Founders: Jeremy Kaufman, Ethan Steinberg
What: Making it easy for landowners to design, plant, and manage agroforestry systems so that they can increase the cash yield of farmland.
Funding: Pre-seed, $600k
Founders: Jules Caron, Misha Lepetic
What: Early-stage carbon project developer with proprietary tools to identify the top 1% of land suitable for Afforestation, Reforestation & Revegetation (ARR) in Africa.
🇿🇦 ValueNature
Funding: Pre-seed, undisclosed
Founder: Simon Morgan
What: African biodiversity credit project facilitators, including embedded carbon biodiversity, creating a platform to purchase Nature Investment Certificates (NIC) (NICs are 10-year contractual agreement to conserve or restore 1 hectare of land).
🇸🇬 Imperative
Funding: Undisclosed
Founders: Scobie MacKay
What: Next-gen carbon project developer focused on ultra-high-quality projects in the Global South with a focus on nature based solutions (like Spekboom)
🇿🇦 Bahari Labs
Funding: Pre-seed, $80,000
Founders: Jay Van Der Walt, Dr. Kathryn Morrissey, and Andrea Plos
What: Africa's first ClimateTech company working to reduce ruminant methane emissions by making livestock more efficient, using the bioactive power of select seaweeds.
🇬🇧 NatureMetrics*
Total Funding: $42M
CEO: Dimple Patel, Founder Director: Kat Bruce
What: Converting the complexities of nature into actionable insights.
Founders: Max-Kasper von Sandrart, Trutz von der Trenck, Johann Meyer zu Bentrup
What: Enabling effective investments in local and biodiverse nature projects.
🇩🇪 Nala Earth
Total Funding: $1.8M
Founders: Nick Zumbühl, Nicolas Somogyi, Anna Alex
What: Empowering companies to measure, manage and report their impact on nature and biodiversity.
🇫🇷 Darwin Data
Founders: Antoine Vallier, Cyprien Hallé, Aurore Falque-Pierrotin
What: Providing a modular platform leveraging AI to support end-to-end nature strategy design for consultants and software providers.
🇩🇪 Leeana
Total Funding: $125K
Founders: Lewis Pierson, Denis Frischmann
What: Streamlining the vast amounts of available biodiversity data and guiding organisations through the process of understanding, measuring, and disclosing their impacts and risks.
🇫🇷 CarbonFarm*
Funding: Seed / $3.91 million
Founders: Vassily Carantino, James Hastwell
What: Harnessing satellites and AI to monitor and certify
decarbonisation projects, such as rice farming, at scale.
🇬🇧 Pivotal
Funding: Seed / $5.6 million
Founders: Zoe Balmforth and Cameron Frayling
What: Building an economy that puts nature and business in balance, Pivotal describes this as an economy for our future – where there’s always a positive exchange.
Total Funding: $11M
Founders: Sonja Stuchtey, Martin Stuchtey
What: Creating a new asset class for regeneration at scale: Nature Equity.
🇫🇷 Genesis
Total Funding: Undisclosed
Founders: Quentin Sannié, Adrienne De Malleray
What: Developing a recognised soil health rating, based on a scientific diagnosis of soil eco-systemic functions. Their game-changer method provides real measurements on environmental impact.
🇨🇭 Xilva
Total Funding: $1.76M
CEO: Tim Duehrkoop
What: Building the digital infrastructure for forestry investments with a focus on enabling funding through holistic project assessments.
Founder: Julie Hernández
What: A biological local inputs supplier and seed bank for reforestations and restorations in the Amazon, fighting against deforestation through the development of Nature-based Solutions; training in ecosystem restoration and conservation and by offering academic, scientific and business tourism programmes.
🇦🇷 RUUTs
Founder: Pablo Ferder
Equity Rounds: 1
What: large-scale land regeneration through regenerative agriculture to address climate change and environmental degradation.
CEO and Co-Founder: Jesús Morales Bautista
What: Promoting the economic, environmental, and social development of communities and forests.
🇲🇽 Tierra Foods
Total Funding: $496K
CEO: Marcela Flores
What: Turning CO2 into minerals in the soil, permanently removing atmospheric CO2.
CEO and Co-Founder: Adriana Luna-Diaz
What: Developing biotechnological solutions based on beneficial microorganisms that allow farmers to have better livelihoods while restoring the natural wealth of the land.
For transparency: Investors that have ties with the company are marked with a (*)