35 ClimateTech Venture Studios Spinning out High-Impact Startups

Startups created in venture studios achieve seed funding twice as fast.

And exit 33% faster than conventional startups.

As the need for climate solutions deepens, these 35 Climate Venture Studios can offer a launchpad for emerging talent who need a way to rapidly test, iterate and scale.

With a primary role to accelerate innovation, they provide early-stage founders with the support, network, resources, and mentorship they need to scale climate solutions quickly and effectively.

Jonny Everett of Marble tells us "it's really about going from an individual with potential all the way through to co-creating a company that could go on to raise capital and succeed and try to be able to surface network insights, capital allocations and unfair advantage, for the founders who come through our studio."

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Venture Studios 101

So what is venture building? As Leo Caprez of Brainforest tells us:

"Venture building is uniquely neither venture capital, nor an accelerator because we do not exclusively fund ventures - we co-develop them and build them up with a shared interest in their success. Further, we differentiate from accelerators because we do not work with large batches of startups, we choose to focus on a specific few, and really build a systems changing solution together to prioritise impact at the core of all the businesses we create."

Each venture studio is unique.

And so before joining a Venture Studio, Jonny suggests asking yourself:

• What's the main value you're looking for from the venture builder you’re joining?

• How far along are you on your founding journey already and how well setup is the studio to give you the tailored support you need at that stage?

• What’s your personal fit with the venture team, thesis and approach?

Climate scientist, Madeleine Luck shares her experience on what future venture scientists should watch out for.

"When considering a venture studio, anything with large cohorts (>8-10) people is less ideal as much of the value lies in creating exclusivity and trust; the value is actually in the cohort, with the network effect (who you will be introduced to) coming in a close second. Related, a physical location is preferable to online. Also, the equity part should be on a future founder’s mind at the very start. I’m also of the opinion that more future founders should interview the existing ‘founders in residence’ - a great way to uncover insights."

Perks and Priorities

9 ways a Climate Venture Studio can supercharge your growth

Strong Networks of Stakeholders:

"It takes radical collaboration to solve any of the systemic crises our world is experiencing. In that regard, we are lucky to count on a multi-layered network of stakeholders who contribute to each step of our venture building journey from problem identification to market validation and beyond," says  Leo Caprez of Brainforest.

A Level Up for Future Funding:

"One of the benefits of coming out of a good venture builder is that it's a good signal to other investors to take those projects seriously. For our founders who have left the studio and are raising their next rounds, not only do they benefit from fast access to top investors, but as a Marble company, they also have us on their team. We’ve been with them since day 0 and can help with negotiations and advice in their first external capital raise as we’re a trusted partner. I think that support is really valuable for first contact with external investors," explains Jonny Everett of Marble.

Been There, Done That:

”Over the past (almost) 10 years, The Kitchen supported a total of 29 companies through our venture-studio. Whether it is in B2B or B2C, focus on the environment or on nutrition, product or service, biotechnology or AI (or both…), we’ve been there. Our team, including CTO, HR, marketing and Biz Dev, can help overcome almost any challenge that an entrepreneur most certainly will encounter. We know the investors, the strategics, the suppliers, the competition, the deals and so on. Joining a venture studio like ours helps Founders achieve more and more quickly. It increases the startup chances for success,” tells Amir Zaidman of The Kitchen.

Handholding by Established Veterans:

“At EMpact, the founders, the Advisory Board, and the mentors are all recognised industry veterans in the fields of development, entrepreneurship, impact investing, financial inclusion, public policy, communications & marketing, business development, agronometry, Tech & AI and other areas of expertise, with at least 15 years of experience each. This brings unique and invaluable resources to every founder who joins our studio,” says Sami Lahoud of EMpact. 

First-Hand Experience of Studio Founders:

"We created Food Founders based on first-hand experience in turning ideas into successful businesses, including the scars and triumphs we collected on our journeys. That is why to fast-track and minimise the risk around building strong startups, we emphasise balanced validation from day one across market desirability, financial viability, and tech feasibility. Clarity and guidance on how to chart the journey ahead serves as a solid foundation for our new founders when navigating the complexities of transforming untapped technology from research institutes into robust, sustainable businesses,” explains Giacomo Cattaneo of Food Founders.

A Vehicle for Collaboration across Sectors:

"Often we find the most impactful ventures / opportunities sit at the intersection of industries and disciplines which rarely crossover ‘in the wild’. For example, opportunities that sit at the intersection of finance and climate tech are relatively untapped in part because of this. Venture Studios have the luxury of being able to target and attract the right talent and expertise to create optimal teams for these opportunities. For our work, this means we can pull together teams to tackle complex topics such as Scope 3 for our corporate partners," tells Daniel Avery of Rainmaking.

Incubation, Ideation and Creation:

"Often startups who enter a venture studio are at the ideation phase. We tend to work with startups who already have a team, a product and some market validation and traction. We fill the gaps in their operational needs to help make them sustainable, commercial companies who are also ripe for their next round of fundraising," says Liat Mazor of TONBO Ventures

"At FoodLabs we believe startup success is rooted in building something people, corporations, and societies want. As a result, we take a very collaborative approach to incubating new businesses, bringing together customers and founders during the early ideation phases. We have found that early feedback loops with the industry have enabled our companies to find product-market fit faster than peers - thereby nearly doubling the odds of raising a Series A compared to other seed-stage businesses. Given our industry focus on food and agriculture, we can foster the collaboration between incumbents looking for innovation and early-stage startups that have inherently found it more difficult to find access to customers," adds Till Hoelzer of FoodLabs.

Technical and Commercial Derisking:

"Our venture creation process gives founders confidence that they're on the right path, from pre-incorporation to scale. It means doing the work beforehand, to ensure they've de-risked their approach technically and commercially, and surrounded themselves with the right team competencies. This means being outcome-centric from day 1, working backwards from the core objective to develop the optimal solution, whether that's producing cost-competitive carbon neutral fuels, or removing bottlenecks to the production of zero emissions steel. That’s why our companies have a market-leading 83% survival rate,” says Noah Geeves of Deep Science Ventures

The Power of Community:

"A simple but powerful benefit - the community they build, especially if the studio enables in-person work. Walking through office doors, water cooler conversations with other founders, venture studio employees asking about your weekend - especially for first time founders used to seeing colleagues every day, this goes a really long way. Building a company is hard, feeling alone (physically or mentally) whilst you do it makes it harder. Venture studios can provide a thick layer of community. You know how the saying goes - if you want to go far, go together," concludes Leone Baron of MCJ Collective

Opportunity in The Global South

Venture studios and venture building are quickly transforming the Climate investment landscape, and can be a powerful talent to unlock talent.

"There are the resources and talent to build the most important solutions from the global south and ventures studios will be central to the creation of a robust pipeline. There’s a need to de-risk these solutions so more capital can flow to the region and thus innovative financial mechanisms have to be created alongside the studios we are developing," shares Waldo Soto Bruna of Reciprocal

“As Persistent we bring more than a decade of experience in building and investing in Climate Ventures in Africa – among other elements like network, filling operational gaps and tangible fundraising support – it is this experience and understanding that we bring to all of our partner companies as we seek to be a true trusted partner to help avoid pitfalls and navigate through the ups and downs of an early-stage company,” add Tobias Ruckstuhl of Persistent.

The A-Z of Climate Ventures Studios

🌍 Africa Climate Ventures (starting, building, and investing in climate businesses in Africa, Rwanda)

🗺️ Ark Ninety (building companies to tackle systemic risks to people & planet, UK)

💡 Atomic (venture studio pioneering the model of starting companies by pairing founders with the best ideas, teams and resources, USA)

🌿 B-Works (digital venture builder in renewable energy, decarbonisation and e-mobility, Switzerland)

🌊 Blue Action (venture studio for coastal and ocean resilience, The Bahamas)

🦜 Brainforest (addressing the triple crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity, Switzerland)

🔬 BXVentures (transforming cutting-edge R&D into commercially successful ventures, Belgium)

💨 Carbon13 (supporting entrepreneurs to build ventures with the potential to each reduce or remove at least 10M tonnes of CO2e per annum once at scale, UK)

🔬Conception X (Creating DeepTech startups from PhDs. Coined "Venture Scientist", UK)

🚀 Deep Science Ventures (combining available scientific knowledge and founder-type scientists into high-impact ventures, UK) 

💦 Deminize Technology (a CleanTech venture studio across energy, water, waste and healthcare, Canada)

🌎 EMpact (a network of venture studio hubs connecting the frontier markets of Central America, West Africa, and Central Asia, with focus on agricultural value chains, USA)

🚀 Entrepreneur First (investing in exceptional individuals to build startups from scratch, UK)

🍗 EVIG Group (a company builder and impact investor in the alternative protein space, Germany) 

🥗 Food Founders (venture studio to create the palate–, planet–, and profit-friendly food ecosystem of tomorrow, Switzerland)

🥘 FoodLabs (a pan-European Early-Stage VC investor and venture studio for food, sustainability, and health, Germany)

📊 FoodYoung (full-stack innovation labs with a venture studio for FoodTech, Switzerland)

🌾 Fresh Ventures Studio (building new companies that accelerate a circular and regenerative food system, Netherlands)

🧑‍🌾 Frontier RNG (supporting global agriculture and desertification innovations and extend them globally to face climate change, Israel)

🎓 Future Climate Venture Studio (for innovators addressing the climate challenge, led by the University of Connecticut, USA)

🐣 hatch & boost (impact venture builder dedicated to hatching startup ideas and boosting them into scalable ventures, UAE)

🛠️ Marble (deeptech venture studio solving hard climate problems, France)

🌐 Newlab (commercialising and scaling the critical technologies needed to decarbonize the economy, USA)

📍NextBillionX (MENAP focused Climate Action Venture Builders, solving the region’s most pressing sustainability and climate impact challenges, Bahrain)

🔍 NOW Venture Studio (DeepTech and DeepScience Venture Studio focused on sustainability & ClimateTech, India)

🌍 Persistent (climate neutral economic development in Africa through venture building, Kenya)

🫘 Pyramidia (building climate-smart AgTech startups in Africa, Kenya)

🌳 Reciprocal (venture studio building exclusively environmental and planetary health solutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, with offices in the US, Germany and Chile)

🤝 Rainmaking (corporate venture builder, focused on partnering with the world’s leading corporations and entrepreneurs to create, accelerate and scale new ventures across UK, Europe, LATAM & MENA)

⚡ Tonbo Ventures is an Israeli climate-tech venture studio, focused in pre-seed to seed stage ventures across Energy, Supply Chain & Logistics, Agri & Land use, and BlueTech.

🧫 The Kitchen Hub (investing in and nurturing cutting-edge FoodTech startups, Israel)

👣 Undaunted (creating new routes into climate entrepreneurship and nurturing the environmental leaders of tomorrow, UK)

🌏 Wavemaker Impact (SouthEast Asia’s First VC backed climate tech venture builder, Singapore)

🧪 Wilbe (educating, building with and investing in scientists who are solving the world’s hardest problems, UK)

🌱 ZINC (a venture builder for exceptional founders who can have outsized impact using cutting-edge science and technologies, UK)

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