🌟 15 Women-Led Series B+ Climate Startups in the US to Know 

Across energy storage infrastructure, CO2 conversion, novel foods, high performance batteries and bio cement

Author

Laura Hodgkiss
November 09, 2023

Only 2.2% of venture capital goes to all-female founder teams.

And just 18.5% to mixed-gender founding teams. 

According to PitchBook, men-only teams getting almost 80% of all VC funding.

Yet despite the many hurdles and hoops to jump through, slowly, but surely the list of women-led Climate startups is growing.

The risks are high, but so too are the rewards. 

Especially for Founders looking to close their Series B and Beyond. Where they need to prove traction, track record and team competence to unlock the next level up in fundraising.

So this week we highlight 15 women across the US who are breaking through the glass ceiling to combine technology and multi-million dollar funding to solve the climate crisis.

But before we do,

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📣 Let’s meet them

Alexandra Rasch Castillo, Founder and CEO at Caban

💸 Funding Raised: $86M
💰 Investors Include: Portfolia, Verizon Ventures, Ember Infrastructure

Alexandra leads a team of engineers, designers, sales, fund raising, manufacturing and business developers who are building the next generation of modular, scalable, and intelligent battery systems for off-grid and microgrid applications.

Caban designs a software enabled energy storage solution for telecom infrastructure providers worldwide.

🏷 Trends: Smart grids, batteries

Anastasia Volkova, CEO and Co-founder at Regrow Ag 

💸 Funding Raised: $63.6M
💰 Investors Include: Rethink Impact, Cargill, Time Ventures, Artesian VC

Anastasia leverages her expertise in data analysis, remote sensing, and machine learning to drive climate action through food production.

Regrow Ag is the first digital platform to unlock the power and profitability of resilient agriculture through a single, measurable and verifiable system. The company combines agronomy, soil and carbon modeling, and digital technology to deliver scalable and verifiable solutions for resilient agriculture.

Christine Moseley, Founder at Full Harvest 

💸 Funding Raised: $39.5M
💰 Investors Include: Portfolia, Doon Capital, Cultivian Sandbox Ventures

Christine is passionate about digitizing the global produce supply chain while reducing food waste, using her experience at leading supply chain and marketing companies to build a high-growth startup. 

Full Harvest is a leading produce business-to-business marketplace with an expertise on imperfect and surplus produce. Its mission is to eliminate on-farm food loss by digitizing the entire produce supply chain.

Davida Herzl, Co-Founder and CEO at Aclima  

💸 Funding Raised: $64M
💰 Investors Include: Bosch Ventures, WomensVCFund, Social Capital, ACVC

For over 12 years, Davida has led a diverse team pioneering an entirely new way to diagnose the health of our air and track climate-changing pollution.

Aclima maps and measures the effects of air pollution and greenhouse gasses using a large network that combines data from roving and stationary sensors at unprecedented scales and with block-by-block resolution.

🏷 Trends: Air conditioning

Etosha Cave, Co-Founder at Twelve

💸 Funding Raised: $199.4M
💰 Investors Include: Breakout Ventures, DCVC, Capricorn Investment

During her Ph.D. Etosha worked on electrochemical approaches that could be used to convert carbon dioxide and water into useful plastics and household cleaners. She put together a team of Stanford graduates to build and scale a startup that recycles CO2. 

Twelve is recycling carbon dioxide and water into higher-valued products - such as jet fuel - using metal catalysts, and electricity. 

Ginger Krieg Dosier, Co-Founder at Biomason

💸 Funding Raised: $95M
💰 Investors Include: 2150, Acorn Innovestments, Novo Holdings

Ginger has devoted eight years of research to the choreography of materiality with an environmental focus, engaging in co-research forums and cross-disciplinary collaboration; seeking a scientific understanding of the properties of material in relation to architectural performance.

Biomason is a developer of a building materials technology that employs natural microorganisms to grow bio cement in ambient temperatures.

Jennifer Holmgren, CEO at LanzaTech

💸 Funding Raised: $1B
💰 Investors Include: Khosla Ventures, BASF, ArcelorMittal, SHV Energy

Jennifer is the author or co-author of 50 patents and 30 scientific publications. She is also a Director and the Chair of the LanzaJet Board of Directors and CEO of LanzaTech where she leads the company to create a carbon smart future.

LanzaTech reduces emissions and makes new products for a circular carbon economy. It is working towards developing a variety of platform chemicals and fuels, including the world’s first alternative jet fuel derived from industrial waste gasses.

Kimberlie Le, Co-Founder and CEO at Prime Roots 

💸 Funding Raised: $48.5M
💰 Investors Include: Portfolia, SOSV, Diamond Edge, Hyphen Capital

Kimberlie is a scientist and entrepreneur determined to make a positive change in her global food system to bring delicious, sustainable, and nutritious foods to the masses and increase accessibility and equity in their food system.

Prime Roots makes mycelium based meats products focusing on deli and charcuterie products.

Lauren Salz, Co-Founder and CEO at Sealed

💸 Funding Raised: $83.5M
💰 Investors Include: Fifth Wall, Footprint Coalition, MUUS Climate Partners

Lauren is passionate about using financial and technological innovation to improve the lives of American homeowners. Under Lauren’s leadership, Sealed has been named one of the 10 most innovative energy companies of 2021 by Fast Company

Sealed designs, manages, and finances home weatherisation and electrification projects. This holistic approach can cut home energy use in half with upgrades such as high-performance insulation, air sealing, and heat pump HVAC. 

Magi Richani, Founder and CEO at Nobell Foods

💸 Funding Raised: $75M
💰 Investors Include: Germin8 Ventures, Footprint Coalition, Fifty Years

When Magi discovered she was lactose-intolerant, she started to research and understand the condition. This led her to quit her role as engineer at Shell and found Nobell.

Nobell Foods unlocks the power of plants to create the next generation of animal-based food substitutes. Nobell is making cheese using casein from genetically engineered soybeans.

Meena Sankaran, Founder and CEO at KETOS

💸 Funding Raised: $38.2M
💰 Investors Include: Citi Impact Fund, Better Ventures, Rethink Impact

Meena has successfully led a variety of roles spanning over 23 years of her career on a global footing ranging from a startup to a Fortune 100 company.

KETOS is a vertically integrated IoT solution to deliver water intelligence to the Industry through patented hardware, enterprise grade software platform and a user friendly business model.

Ramya Swaminathan, CEO at Malta

💸 Funding Raised: $86.9M
💰 Investors Include: Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Piva Capital

Ramya led the spin-out of Malta from X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory (formerly Google X) in 2018, and has been the company’s CEO since to commercialise Malta’s thermal storage technology and lead the company through multiple rounds of corporate funding.

Malta is a provider of industrial-grade, grid-scale energy storage, and electro-thermal energy storage solutions for the energy industry.

🏷 Trends: Smart grids

Sara Menker, Founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence

💸 Funding Raised: $117.6M
💰 Investors Include: DCVC, Intel Capital, EchoVC Partners, GGV Capital

Sara saw first hand the effects of drought and famine firsthand when she grew up in Ethiopia.  Realising there was a lack of reliable data to predict weather events, crop yields, and food prices she launched Gro Intelligence in 2014.

Gro Intelligence is an AI-powered decision engine across agriculture, climate, and the economy. From assessing the impact of climate change in real time to optimising agricultural supply chains, Gro’s data, analytics and forecast models provide answers to what on earth is going on.

Shreya Dave, Co-founder and CEO at Via Separations

💸 Funding Raised: $57.4M
💰 Investors Include: Embark Ventures, The Engine, Safar Partners

Shreya’s PhD research focused on the design and manufacture of graphene oxide membranes for water desalination, including fundamental characterisation methods of graphene oxide, membrane synthesis, and economic analysis of the role of membranes in cost constraints of desalination plants.

Via Separations’ innovation is a highly selective and robust membrane filter that replaces energy inefficient heat-based separations in industrial processes. Spun out of MIT, Via has scaled up the technology by more than 10 million times and demonstrated working prototypes at commercial scale. 

🏷 Trends: Water desalination

Siyu Huang, Founder and CEO at Factorial Energy

💸 Funding Raised: $240M
💰 Investors Include: Wave Equity Partners, Mercedes Benz, Stellantis

Siyu is a passionate proponent of the clean energy revolution, and believes that innovative battery technology will usher in a new age of EV performance and increased battery storage capabilities for any industry. 

Factorial Energy focuses on a sustainable future with safe, high performance batteries for EVs, homes, and critical applications.

Know a founder who should be on this list or a Series B+ female founder outside of USA? Drop us a note at [email protected]