🚢 Vol 142: Maritime intelligence nets $10M, in 36 hours

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Tomorrow is #ShowYourStripes Day when climate data goes visual and viral.

The warming stripes, created by climate scientist Ed Hawkins, show 175 years of temperature change in one simple graphic: a simple pattern of light blues shifting to deep reds as the planet heats up.

Temperature check your hometown to see how your city stacks up. Here’s mine:

In this week’s edition:

🔥 Pano AI raised $44 million to expand its AI-powered tools that support emergency managers in combating the growing wildfire crisis.
💸 Climate Tech Partners secured $50 million to back Series A climate tech startups across energy, transport, and industrial sectors.
🍄 Empa have developed glow-in-the-dark wood by infusing it with bioluminescent fungi, creating a sustainable, electricity-free lighting alternative.

The Digest

📈 What’s up? Early-stage investment in Australia is increasingly flowing to startups addressing climate, health, and social challenges, with impact ventures accounting for 41.5% of early-stage funding in 2024—driven largely by a $1 billion surge in climate tech—according to Giant Leap’s Impact Startups Benchmark Report 2025.

🎓 Opinion: Why it's time European universities stop being anchors and start being accelerators.

💸 AENU weighs in: Why Climate Tech isn’t dead. It’s just maturing.

👀 Good read: Planet A Ventures explains the current AI blindspot. 

⚖️ Opinion: Yair Reem shares why scaling doesn’t always mean cheaper.

💦 Bold Idea: Walmart heir Lukas Walton’s $15bn bet on the environment.

💡 During London Climate Action Week, Net Zero Insights, the Singapore EDB, and Climate First are hosting a preview of NZI’s H1 2025 State of Climate Tech report and a panel on regional funding trends, register here.

📆 Plus check out Planeteer’s busy Event Planner for London Climate Action Week.

AgriFood x Climate

🍗 Netherlands-based Rival Foods secured €10 million in a Series B funding round led by pension investor APG, with participation from PYMWYMIC, ROM Utrecht Region, and PeakBridge, to scale its clean-label whole-cut plant-based meat technology, double production capacity, and expand internationally.

🍄 French startup Fungu’it raised €4 million, in a round led by Asterion Ventures and with participation from Evolem and UI Investissement, to scale its fungi fermentation technology that transforms food waste into natural, cost-efficient flavours for plant-based meat and cocoa alternatives.

💡 Swedish agritech startup BlueRedGold raised €2.73 million in a round led by PINC, with participation from The Food Tech Lab and PolarVentures, to build a modular indoor facility and scale its automated saffron cultivation system for global licensing.

✅ Sydney startup Vow received regulatory approval to serve its cultured quail meat products, including Forged Parfait and Forged Gras, in Australia for the first time, following two years of food safety review by FSANZ.

Biodiversity x Climate

🔥 San Francisco-based wildfire detection startup Pano AI raised $44 million in a Series B funding round led by Giant Ventures, with participation from Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Tokio Marine Group, Congruent Ventures, Initialized Capital, and Salesforce Ventures, to expand its AI-powered tools that support emergency managers in combating the growing wildfire crisis.

📹 Watch this: How this prehistoric creature is saving millions of lives with a superpower in its blood.

Energy x Climate

🇩🇰 Denmark’s Hymeth secured €3.7 million in a funding round led by Thisbe AB and supported by Antler and existing shareholders, to scale its patented, high-efficiency alkaline electrolysis technology for affordable green hydrogen production.

🌍 Stockholm-based energy startup Engrate raised €2.5 million in a seed funding round led by Maniv, with participation from Eviny Ventures and Course Corrected, to enhance its digital integration platform and support international expansion across Northern Europe.

🌞 Watch it being built: A solar data center powered entirely off-grid.

🚘 Spanish startup Tether secured €1.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Draper B1 and K Fund, with participation from Enzo Ventures, Inclimo Climate Tech Fund, Zero4Climate, and COREangels Climate, to scale its AI-powered platform that transforms electric vehicles into distributed grid assets.

🇨🇭 Swiss startup exnaton has partnered with TotalEnergies Belgium to launch the country's first dynamic electricity tariff using exnaton’s AI-based platform, marking the startup’s entry into the Belgian market and advancing its Europe-wide expansion strategy.

🔋 Finland has activated the world’s largest sand-based thermal battery, developed by Polar Night Energy, using discarded soapstone to store 1,000 MWh of heat for district heating and offering a low-cost, low-emission alternative to oil and wood chips.

☀️ Scientists from Seoul National University’s IBS Center have developed a breakthrough technology that uses sunlight and water to convert plastic waste into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable byproducts via a stabilised photocatalytic system.

🎬 Good watch: These giant buoys turn waves into electricity.

Funds x Climate

💰 Belgian early-stage investor biotope by VIB secured €5 million at the first close of its second fund, Biotope Ventures 2, with backing from BNP Paribas Fortis, Agri Investment Fund, SFPIM Relaunch, Anacura, VIB, The Nest, and Edaphon, to invest €250,000 in up to 30 international biotech startups advancing planetary health.

🇭🇷Croatian capital investment and company builder BOSQAR INVEST raised €143.2 million, marking the country's largest-ever non-state, non-bank Sustainability-Linked Bond issuance. It raised the funds through a public and private placement backed by investors including Erste & Steiermärkische Bank, NLB, UniCredit/Zagrebačka banka, Intesa Sanpaolo/PBZ, Croatian pension funds, major insurance firms, and the EBRD, with proceeds tied to its greenhouse gas reduction targets.

💵 Australian venture capital firm Climate Tech Partners secured $50 million at the first close of its debut fund, with major investments from Australian Ethical Investments, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Qantas, Airbus, and Daniel Besen’s family office, to back Series A climate tech startups across energy, transport, and industrial sectors.

💷 UK-based Northern Gritstone launched the Northern Universities Venture Fund to invest in early-stage, IP-rich science and deeptech spinouts from the Universities of Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield, supported by £50 million in recent funding from institutional investors including Aviva and Fulcrum Asset Management.

Materials x Climate

🧯 What happens to a fire hose after 25 years of service.

🇬🇧 UK Research and Innovation is investing £44 million into four research hubs—IGNITE, Co-AIMS, EPSRC, and Carbon-Loop—to develop advanced technologies that enhance the sustainability of steel, AI-driven manufacturing, plastics, and bio-based materials.

⛏️ Finnish startup Hypermine, a spinout from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, closed a seed funding round with investments from Stephen Industries, Sage Enterprises, and VTT. It will use the funds to scale its AI-powered hyperspectral sensing technology that boosts mineral recovery efficiency while reducing the environmental impact of mining.

🍄 Swiss scientists at Empa have developed glow-in-the-dark wood by infusing it with bioluminescent fungi, creating a sustainable, electricity-free lighting alternative with potential applications in eco-friendly urban lighting, design, and energy conservation.

😷 A new study published in Nano-Micro Letters presents a cost-effective method to upcycle discarded disposable face masks into high-performance nanocomposite materials for use in electronics.

👟 Check out shoes made from apple, not by Apple. And these made from bacteria.

💯 100+ startups at the intersection of materials and AI - mapped.

Mobility x Climate

🚢 US maritime intelligence startup AndrenaM secured $10 million in a funding round led by First Round Capital, with participation from Also Capital, Long Journey, 201 Ventures, Banter Capital, Homebrew, Wave Function Ventures, and Mines Venture Fund Management, to scale its AI-powered buoy network for real-time, ocean-wide sensing and maritime traffic tracking, raised in just 36 hours.

📲 Rotterdam-based mobility startup umob raised €3.5 million to accelerate the expansion of its all-in-one booking app for sustainable urban transport across Europe, following its acquisition of MaaS Global.

Fundraising x Climate

🚣🏽 Belief was high, checks run dry.

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Editorial by Laura, Curation by Nicola