🛰️ Vol 149: Methane Metrics from Space

Hi there

You rarely see it up close, but maritime transport is one of the planet’s biggest carbon culprits, responsible for almost 1 billion tonnes of CO₂ every year

The industry has long struggled to electrify, hampered by massive power needs, red tape, and slow shipbuilding cycles. Now the tide is finally turning.

Thanks to advances in battery tech, charging infrastructure, and smarter energy management, a wave of high-performance and eco-friendly alternatives to traditional fuel engines are hitting the water.

Here’s 28 nautical startups that caught our eye.

In this week’s edition:

⚛️ Commonwealth Fusion Systems raises $863 million to advance its Sparc fusion reactor and future commercial power plant.
🪨 Terraton raised an $11.5 million seed funding round to become the “Mcdonald’s of biochar” by scaling its “business-in-a-box” biochar facilities.
💦 everwave closed its largest growth financing round to date, to expand its AI-supported river cleanup and recycling operations into Southeast Asia.

Digest x Climate

📊 Good read: How offtake agreements can be a powerful tool to de-risk first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate tech projects and unlock the capital needed to scale.

📈 What’s up? According to DataM Intelligence, the global ethanol market is set to grow from $94.6B in 2024 to $162.7B by 2032 at a 7.1% CAGR, driven by biofuel demand and government policies, with the US and Brazil producing over 70% of global supply.

📉 What’s down? A Rhodium Group and MIT study found that Q2 US clean tech manufacturing saw $5 billion in project cancellations versus $4 billion in new announcements, with actual investments dropping 15%.

🇺🇸 Last day to apply to join Discipulus Ventures’ next cohort, open to all Founders working on real problems.

🇰🇪 Relive the highlights of ClimateHack Nairobi’s Investor Meet and Greet and 🇸🇪 Stockholm’s first ClimateHack Meetup

💡 Jobs at L’Oreal’s Venture Fund, Carbonade, Circonomy, Caravel

💋 Top tips: 21 ways to seduce an Early-Stage Climate Investor.

AgriFood x Climate

🫘 NuCicer closed an $11.5 million Series A funding round led by Rhapsody Venture Partners with participation from Leaps by Bayer, Illumina Ventures, Better Ventures, Stray Dog Capital, and a global food company, to scale its high-protein chickpea varieties and advance next-generation breeding for sustainable, minimally processed ingredients.

🌱 UK-based Bright Biotech secured £1 million from ARIA’s £62.4 million Synthetic Plants programme to advance its chloroplast technology for developing resilient, sustainable crop plants and animal-free proteins.

👩‍🍳 India’s Biokraft Foods showcased its cultivated chicken through the country’s first Great Indian Cultivated Chicken Cook-Off, where young chefs created dishes to highlight the product’s culinary potential and spark dialogue on sustainability and the future of food.

🐝 University of Oxford researchers have engineered a yeast-based food supplement enriched with key sterols that boosted honeybee colony reproduction up to 15-fold in trials, offering a potential breakthrough for pollinator health and global food security.

Carbon x Climate

🪨 US-based Terraton raised an $11.5 million seed funding round led by Lowercarbon Capital and Gigascale Capital, with participation from ANA Holdings, East Japan Railway’s Takanawa Gateway Global Co-Benefits Fund, and business angels, to become the “Mcdonald’s of biochar” by scaling its “business-in-a-box” biochar facilities that sequester carbon while improving soil health.

🌊 Frontier struck its first ocean alkalinity deal, agreeing to buy 115,211 metric tons of carbon removal credits from Planetary for $31.3 million, pricing carbon at $270/ton and supporting the startup’s plan to scale a method that could eventually remove over 1 billion tons of CO₂ annually.

Energy x Climate

⚛️ Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised $863 million in a Series B2 round with participation from Nvidia, Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Emerson Collective, Eni, Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global, Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and others. The round brings its total funding to nearly $3 billion to advance its Sparc fusion reactor and future commercial power plant.

⚡️ US-based Copper secured $28 million from Prelude Ventures, Building Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Climactic, Designer Fund, Necessary Ventures, Leap Forward Ventures, Climate Capital, and Dangerous Ventures to scale its battery-equipped induction ranges and multifamily electrification solutions.

🔋 UK-based Yottar, which maps electrical grid capacity to help companies site data centers and EV chargers, raised a $1 million pre-seed funding round led by Haatch with participation from Cape Capital and angel investors to expand its SaaS platform used by customers including Tesla and the NHS.

🇺🇦 Greenvi AI, based in Ukraine and which provides an AI-powered SaaS platform for real-time renewable energy market intelligence, raised €25,000 from the EU’s Seeds of Bravery program and secured an additional grant win to support its expansion across Europe and the US.

🇨🇭 Switzerland-based Previse Systems secured growth capital from Lightrock. The cloud-native Energy Trading & Risk Management software provider will use the funds to expand internationally and support energy companies facing increasingly complex market exposures.

Materials x Climate

♻️ How do we separate fact from fiction? Check out this clever table of sustainability certifications by Roma Dhanani.

⚠️ New Zealand startup Nurox Hydrothermal has partnered with Interwaste to deploy its heat-, water-, and pressure-based technology that breaks down hazardous waste into inert by-products and acetic acid, aiming to replace offshore incineration with cleaner, scalable onshore disposal starting in 2026.

⛏️ ChemFinity Technologies, based in the US, raised an oversubscribed $7 million seed funding round co-led by At One Ventures and Overture Ventures, with participation from Closed Loop Partners, Pace Ventures, WovenEarth Ventures, and Climate Capital, to scale its sorbent filter technology for recovering and recycling critical minerals from domestic waste streams.

🚗 US-based Uncaged Innovations has developed plant-based leather alternatives from grains like wheat, soy, and corn that mimic the feel, look, and even smell of animal leather, and is now partnering with Hyundai Cradle and Jaguar Land Rover to adapt the material for automotive use with a 95% lower carbon footprint.

🗑️ A list of 100+ waste-to-value startups in materials and the circular supply chain.

Methane

📡 New York-based Mitti Labs has developed AI-powered software that uses satellite and radar data to measure methane emissions from rice paddies, enabling accurate tracking, reporting, and verification of emissions at scale.

Water

💦 Aachen-based everwave closed its largest growth financing round to date, with investment from Viessmann Generations Group, KSK-Wagniskapital, SistaAct, the European Social Innovation and Impact Fund, capacura, and NRW.BANK, to expand its AI-supported river cleanup and recycling operations into Southeast Asia.

🌦️ Bright Harbor, based in the US, raised a $10.1 million seed funding round co-led by Congruent Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital, with participation from Crystal Venture Partners, Everywhere Ventures, Knight Ventures, Kindergarten Ventures, Jetstream, and Draft Ventures, to scale its disaster operating system for communities, enterprises, and governments.

Role Reversal x Climate 

We’d love to hear from you, how did you like today's email?

Love it😁 Meh 😐 Hate it🙁

Could we take 5 minutes of your time? Take part in our Global Impact Survey

Editorial by Laura, Curation by Nicola