🌱 Vol 150: Mining Metals without the Mine

Hi there

Climate Week NYC is just around the corner.

✅ Bags (almost) packed for next week
✅ Calendar packed with get togethers
✅ Game plan for networking & events

But here’s the real question: who should you meet to unlock climate funding? 

Not every VC is leaning into HardTech, and knowing who’s actively deploying into Climate Deep Tech can save you valuable time, both when fundraising.

That’s why we pulled together a list of 180 investors deploying funds ready to back the next wave of Climate Tech moonshots, spanning materials, infrastructure, electrification, agri-food, biotech, nuclear, robotics and more.

↘ Not heading to NY next week and already feeling the FOMO? Mark your calendar and join us in December at the HackSummit in Brooklyn, NY.

In this week’s edition:

🌊 Katapult Ocean Asia and OCTAVE Capital launched the Asia Ocean Fund, a $75 million vehicle, the region’s largest dedicated ocean impact fund
🧪 Bioweg raised €16 million in a Series A to build an industrial facility producing bacterial cellulose as a sustainable alternative to microplastics
🚛 EV Realty raised $75 million to expand its grid-optimised charging hubs for electric commercial trucks, including a site capable of charging over 200 Class 8 trucks daily

Digest x Climate

👉 Good read: TechCrunch shares how Bill Gates’ fellowship program is adapting to global uncertainty.

🚀 Introducing Fifty Years’ Requests for Startups for the 5050 AI track to support AI researchers building an aligned AI future.

💡 Biotope Ventures backs diverse biotech founders with €350K early-stage investment (€250K cash + €100K tailored support). The first step? A 3-week basecamp (Dec 2–19), apply here.

👀 Hardware founders: Discover how to attract debt financing to fuel the growth of your climate company. Free webinar with Tangible Finance on 7 Oct, 12pm BST.

🗽 Join Deep Science Ventures on September 22nd in New York to discuss three of their key "angles of attack" for tackling climate change using deep tech: toxicity, adaptation & catastrophic risk, and decarbonising legacy industries.

AgriFood x Climate

🏭 Australian plant-based protein manufacturer Harvest B secured $3.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Mandalay Venture Partners with support from Breakthrough Victoria, Alberts Impact Ventures, the Investible Climate Tech Fund, and Investible Club, to scale its operations.

🍳 Singapore-based Terra Oleo emerged from stealth with $3.1 million in funding from investors including ADB Ventures, The Radical Fund, Elev8.vc, Better Bite Ventures, and a strategic palm oil player, while also being named to Breakthrough Energy’s 2025 Fellows cohort to scale its precision-fermented, waste-derived alternatives to palm oil and cocoa butter.

🌻 Dutch startup Time-Travelling Milkman raised €2 million pre-Series A funding from Sparkalis, Evercurious, and Oost NL to commercialise its sunflower-seed-based fat alternative Oleocream, starting with next-gen cream cheeses and desserts.

🇷🇴 Romanian startup Terra Wave secured a €1.2 million EU innovation grant to scale its proprietary fermentation technology for producing next-generation fungi-based proteins for meat, plant-based, and pet food applications.

🛼 Catch up on all 12 latest funding rounds with FoodHack.

Carbon x Climate

🌬️ US-based DACLab emerged from stealth with $3 million seed funding to scale its lower-energy direct air capture technology, which it says can already remove CO₂ at 1,500 kWh per ton with plans to cut costs further through larger deployments in the US and Kenya.

⚖️ Comparison: 1 million vs 1 billion tonnes of carbon removal.

Construction x Climate

🍃 Take a look at life inside a modern wind turbine created by Superuse and Blade–Made.

Energy x Climate

🪫 German grid-scale battery storage developer Terra One secured up to €150 million in mezzanine financing from Aviva Investors, enabling up to €750 million of investment in new storage assets to build around 3 GWh of capacity for Europe’s energy transition.

❄️ Rodatherm Energy, a geothermal startup using a closed-loop refrigerant-based system it claims is 50% more efficient than water-based designs, emerged from stealth with $38 million in Series A funding led by Evok Innovations to build a 1.8-megawatt pilot plant in Utah by 2026.

🔥 Cambridge-based Fourth Power secured $20 million in a Series A Plus round led by Munich Re Ventures, with Breakthrough Energy Ventures and DCVC participating, to build a 1 MWh demonstration of its molten-tin thermal battery technology aimed at delivering low-cost, long-duration energy storage by 2028.

🔋 Dutch flexibility services provider Sympower raised €19 million from pension investor PGGM, extending its Series B1 to €42 million, to expand its battery storage optimisation solutions, pursue M&As, and accelerate pan-European growth.

☀️ German Agri-PV company feld.energy raised over €10 million seed funding. The round was led by HV Capital with participation from Future Energy Ventures, AENU, and Angel Invest, and it will use the funds to scale its dual-use solar and farming systems.

⚡️ Suena secured €8 million in a Series A funding round led by Eneco Ventures, with participation from 4impact capital, InnoEnergy, J.O.S.S., Santander Asset Management, and Energie 360°, to scale its AI-powered Energy Trading Autopilot for optimising storage and renewables in power markets.

✂️ Hamburg-based software company encentive secured €6.3 million in a seed funding round led by General Catalyst and existing investors to expand its AI-driven energy management platform, which helps industries cut energy costs by up to 20% and reduce CO2 emissions.

📈 US heat pump startup Quilt has delivered what it calls the first over-the-air HVAC upgrade, boosting the heating and cooling capacity of its installed units by more than 20% through new software and firmware updates.

Funds x Climate

🇪🇸 Barcelona-based Suma Capital closed its ClimateTech fund SC Net Zero Ventures I at €210 million - 40% above target - with backing from Repsol, the EIF, and Spanish public institutions, to scale European startups driving industrial decarbonisation.

💸 BNVT Capital, a new VC firm founded by ex-Hedosophia investor Chris Corbishley and former Gates Foundation staffer Rory Mounsey-Heysham, raised a $150 million fund with backing from leaders at Shopify, Google, Octopus Energy, Remitly, and others to invest $3-7 million in startups tackling systemic societal problems.

🌾 Mad Capital closed its Perennial Fund II at $78.4 million - over seven times the size of its first fund - to provide loans helping US farmers transition to regenerative-organic practices, with backing from The Rockefeller Foundation, Builders Vision, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and more than 100 other investors.

🌊 Katapult Ocean Asia and OCTAVE Capital launched the Asia Ocean Fund, a $75 million vehicle billed as the region’s largest dedicated ocean impact fund targeting sectors from maritime decarbonisation to sustainable aquaculture.

Materials x Climate

🌱 Paris-based Genomines closed its oversubscribed Series A funding round with $45 million. The round was led by Engine Ventures and Forbion BioEconomy, with backing from Hyundai Motor Group, Jaguar Land Rover, and others. It will use the funds to scale its plant-based phytoextraction platform that produces battery-grade nickel faster, cheaper, and with far lower emissions than traditional mining. Hear from the Founders.

🧪 Germany’s Bioweg raised €16 million in a Series A funding round led by Axeleo Capital’s Green Tech Industry Fund, with participation from the EIC Fund, NBank Capital, BonVenture, and Dr.-Ing. Frank Jenner. It will use the funds to scale its bio-ingredients business and build an industrial facility producing bacterial cellulose as a sustainable alternative to microplastics.

👀 Good read: Suzanne Lee, Biofabricate on why “The biomaterials space is beginning to get real; we've come out of the Wild West”

❎ California lawmakers have passed a bill to ban consumer products containing intentionally added PFAS, phasing out items like food packaging by 2028 and cookware by 2030, pending Governor Gavin Newsom’s approval.

🧱 Video: Reimaging Malmö’s iconic Stortorget if it were to become a carbon sink, powered by Paebbl.

Mobility x Climate

✈️ Swansea-based HyFlux will lead the £1.5 million SUPERCOOL project, backed by £1.1 million from the UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute Programme, to develop lightweight cryogenic cooling systems for superconducting motors for use in zero-emission hydrogen-electric aircraft.

🚛 EV Realty raised $75 million in a round led by NGP to expand its California network of grid-optimised charging hubs for electric commercial trucks, including a 76-stall San Bernardino site capable of charging over 200 Class 8 trucks daily.

Music x Climate

🎶 If your relationship with sustainability regulations was a song title.

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Editorial by Laura, Curation by Nicola