💰 ClimateHack Vol. 67: $375M Climate Tech Fund

Hey There,

For those who might have missed it - we’re now in the final quarter of 2023. That’s 3 months, or more accurately, 86 days to achieve whatever goals you set for yourself back in January.

So let’s go get it.

In Today’s Edition;

🌎 At One Ventures close their $375M dedicated climate tech fund.
🛩 US-based Regen secures $60M Series A for their electric sea gliders.
🐓 French plant-based chicken producer Umiami raise €32.5M in new funding.

Digest x Climate

📈 What’s up? The International Energy Agency estimates that global hydrogen demand will reach 530 million tons by 2050, nearly six times its 2020 levels.

📉 What’s down? Volkswagen has cancelled its plans for a $2.1 billion electric vehicle plant in Germany, as it moves into cost-cutting mode.

🌳 Brainforest launched its Food Lab program to support startups and entrepreneurs building solutions to innovate the regenerative food forest space. Find out more here.

⚡️ The US Department of Energy awarded $5 million to six projects to increase climate resilience, particularly in vulnerable communities, which will empower local universities to use DOE climate science to help tackle the problems caused by climate change.

Carbon x Climate

🔎 US-based Muir AI raised $3.25 million seed funding to analyse the carbon footprint of companies’ supply chains, helping them to reduce their carbon emissions.

🏭 Immaterial Ltd, based in the UK, successfully closed its Series A funding round. It develops and supplies unique monolithic metal-organic frameworks with superior volumetric capacity to support point source carbon capture and intermittent hydrogen storage.

🔬 Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found a novel approach to release CO2 from a solvent used in direct air capture, paving the way to economically viable separation of CO2 from the atmosphere, on-demand.

Food x Climate

🐓 French plant-based whole-cut chicken producer Umiami secured a further €32.5 million Series A funding, bringing its total raised to date to over €100 million, and will use the funds to scale production, accelerate European distribution and set up its US operations.

🥛 Australian precision fermentation company Eden Brew raised $24.4 million Series A funding to scale what it calls a “world-first” animal-free casein micelle, which helps it replicate the sensorial and nutritional properties of animal dairy.

🏭 Pow.bio, based in California, secured $9.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Re:Food and Thia Ventures. The startup promises to “change the future of precision fermentation” with its “smarter, not bigger” bioreactors which will “unlock economic viability”.

🤝 German mycoprotein startup Nosh.bio and Boston-based synbio company Ginkgo Bioworks are partnering to use the latter’s AI-powered cell programming platform to find protein-producing fungi strains with superior sensory profiles and develop a single-ingredient meat alternative.

🌾 Food industry giants such as Nestlé and Danone have formed the SAI Platform to align on a definition of regenerative agriculture and have released a framework for how businesses should transition to more sustainable practices.

☕️ Kaffe Bueno inaugurated the world’s first coffee biorefinery in Denmark, where it will convert coffee by-products into valuable compounds, including active and functional ingredients for personal care, human nutrition, animal health, and soil and crop health.

Construction x Climate

🏗 UK-based Concretene secured three government grants totalling £1.25 million. It combines concrete with graphene to create a material that it says is as much as 30-50% stronger than standard concrete and produces fewer carbon emissions.

🧱 British startup Biozeroc received a grant of £815,000 from Innovate UK to scale its novel technique to “grow” cement-free concrete using biotech and existing materials.

Energy x Climate

🦄 US-based green hydrogen technology company Electric Hydrogen raised $380 million Series C funding and hit a $1 billion valuation, making it green hydrogen’s first unicorn. It will use the funds to expand production capacity of its electrolysers.

🧪 Osmoses, a startup spun out of MIT and Stanford University, secured $11 million seed funding to bring its molecule-scale membranes, which it says are more selective and less energy-intensive than others on the market today. to the hydrogen market.

🔋 Australian battery recycling startup Renewable Metals raised $8 million seed funding to scale its technology, which has the potential to recover more critical minerals during the recycling process than existing recycling methods, including around 20% more lithium.

📊 Paris-based Granular Energy secured €7.5 million seed funding, in a round led by Norrsken VC, to address what it sees as a lack of transparency in the clean energy market. It provides utility companies with software tools which automate the management and allocation of energy certificates.

🔋 New startup Peak Energy, founded by battery industry veterans from Tesla and Northvolt, has launched to scale production of sodium-ion batteries as fast as possible in the US.

Transport x Climate

🚤 US-based Regent secured $60 million Series A funding in a round led by 8090 Industries and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. It is developing electric sea gliders, and has also struck a partnership with Japan Airlines to figure out how to bring their flying ferries to the waterways of Japan.

🔌 Indian startup Bolt.Earth raised $20 million from investors including Union Square Ventures, Prime Venture Partners and ITIGO Funds. It offers charging infrastructure and software solutions for electric vehicles, and will use the funds to further expand its charging network.

Materials x Climate

🧪 Canadian biomaterials startup erthos™ closed its oversubscribed Series A round with $6.5 million. Its proprietary plant-based resins are fully compostable, and serve as a sustainable alternative to traditional plastics like Polypropylene and Lower Density Polyethylene.

🌿 London-based FlexSea raised $2 million, in an equity seed round led by Indico Capital Partners, for its durable seaweed-derived bioplastic, which is fully biodegradable in soil and marine environments and can be composted at home within eight to twelve weeks.

☕️ Spanish startup Recycap Technologies secured €155,000 to further develop its Recycap Automated Coffee Technology (REACT™) system, designed to completely remove coffee grounds from both aluminium and plastic coffee capsules so they can be disposed of in standard recycling bins.

🍴 A ban on single-use plastic cutlery, balloon sticks and polystyrene cups and food containers came into force across England this week, in a bid to reduce plastic pollution across the country.

🍄 US mycelium-focused company Ecovative is opening access to a European patent for its plastic-free MycoComposite™ materials, meaning that all individuals and businesses in Europe can now use the materials to create sustainable alternatives to plastics and damaging chemicals.

Funds x Climate

🌎 San Francisco-based At One Ventures raised $375 million to support early-stage disruptive deep tech startups with the “potential to upend the unit economics of established industries while dramatically reducing their footprint on the planet”.

🇫🇷 French VC firm HCVC closed its second fund with $75 million to support pre-seed and seed-stage deep tech companies in Europe and North America, working in fields such as climate, biotech, robotics and space.

🇬🇧 British startup consultancy firm Plexal is partnering with Shift to launch a £1.47 million scaleup programme to support 215 London-based climate tech companies with scaling their plans and testing their technologies.

🦓 Mirabaud Asset Management is partnering with Zebra Impact Ventures to launch a new project, which will support nature-positive innovation to help tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.

Memes x Climate

🏍 Not a meme, but seriously who do I have to bribe to bring this to my city?

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola.