🔥 Vol 151: Wildfire supercomputers power AI forecasting

Hi there

Corporate venture capital is a critical driver to accelerate commercialization, innovation and investment in Climate Tech.

But who’s actually behind these CVCs?

In the US alone, a growing network of corporate investors (we tracked 56) are placing bets on the technologies that could define the next industrial era.

Packed with investor insights from 6 leading CVCs, 56 CVCs to know and the area they invest in, this is a go-to cheatsheet for fundraising Founders eyeing up scaleup and commercialisation.

In this week’s edition:

💸 C4 Ventures launches its third €100 million fund to back early-stage AI and deep tech startups across Europe
🇳🇱 Brineworks raises €6.8 million to scale its ultra-low-cost DAC and hydrogen co-production technology toward pilot deployment and commercial readiness by 2026.
✈️ OXCCU, a University of Oxford spinout developing sustainable aviation fuel from waste carbon, announces a £20.75 million Series B round.

Digest x Climate

🇫🇷 This is a pollution map of Paris, 17 years apart, shared via Felix.

🔢 Al Gore’s nonprofit Climate Trace launched an AI-powered tool that tracks fine particulate pollution from over 660 million global sources, aiming to expose polluters and highlight the severe public health impacts of fossil fuel emissions.

💯 Norrsken Foundation released its annual Impact/100. Discover which startups made the list including Proxima Fusion, Vema, Traceless, VEIR, NitroVolt and Cylib.

👋 Join us at the next ClimateHack Meetups in Amsterdam and Cape Town.

🎧 Tune in to Another ClimateTech Podcast’s funniest episode with comedian Stuart Goldsmith.

🌎 Good read: Reciprocal Ventures’ report on why, where and how to support climate and nature tech in Latin America and the Caribbean is worth a read.

AgriFood x Climate

🍗 French plant-based meat startup Nxtfood raised €49 million from Creadev, Roquette Ventures, Clay Capital, and IRD Invest, marking the largest European plant-based meat investment since 2022, to triple production capacity, expand into new markets, and target profitability within 18 months.

🍄 Dutch fungi-based ingredients producer The Protein Brewery raised €30 million Series B funding from Invest-NL, BOM, Novo Holdings, Unovis Asset Management, and Madeli to scale production, expand its Fermotein® mycoprotein platform, and strengthen its commercial presence in Europe and the US.

🥚 Netherlands-based scale-up Revyve secured nearly €24 million in a Series B funding round co-led by ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund and Invest-NL, bringing its total capital raised to over €40 million.

🇧🇷 Brazilian startup Typcal, which grows mycoprotein via biomass fermentation using proprietary fast-growing fungi strains, has been accepted into the biotope by VIB incubator’s seventh cohort, securing €250,000 in funding and €100,000 in tailored support to scale its sustainable protein and fibre production.

💰 The Gates Foundation and Novo Nordisk Foundation have extended the Acetate Consortium for two more years with a $25.6 million investment to advance technologies that turn CO₂ into proteins and produce consumer-tested food prototypes.

Biodiversity x Climate

📡 The Natural History Museum in London installed a 25-sensor network powered by Amazon Web Services to collect real-time environmental and acoustic data, making its Nature Discovery Garden the most intensively studied urban nature site of its kind and advancing biodiversity research and urban nature recovery.

🌦️ Earthmover has pivoted from long-term data-centric climate insights to weather-focused applications and raised $7.2 million in a seed funding round led by Lowercarbon Capital with participation from Costanoa Ventures and Preston-Werner Ventures to expand its open-source geospatial data platform.

🌊 The Wildlife Conservation Society launched its 2025-2030 Coral Reef Conservation Strategy, a global plan to safeguard the world’s most climate-resilient coral reefs by mapping, protecting, and scaling conservation solutions that enhance reef resilience, support marine biodiversity, and sustain coastal communities.

🔥 Technosylva unveiled the world’s largest supercomputers dedicated to wildfire modelling, capable of running over one billion daily simulations with AI to predict threats to communities and power lines up to five days in advance.

Carbon x Climate

🇳🇱 Amsterdam-based Brineworks raised €6.8 million in a funding round led by SeaX Ventures with support from Pale Blue Dot, First Momentum, AiiM Partners, Energie360° and Katapult, to scale its ultra-low-cost Direct Air Capture and hydrogen co-production technology toward pilot deployment and commercial readiness by 2026.

🤖 ANYbotics, a Swiss provider of autonomous robotic inspection solutions, secured a strategic investment from Climate Investment to accelerate global expansion, support industrial decarbonisation, and launch its ANYmal X robot for hazardous environments by 2026.

🤝 California-based Aircapture has joined forces with Japanese concrete producer AIZAWA to install a commercial direct air capture facility at Fukushima’s RDM Center, capturing CO₂ for use in concrete production while addressing Japan’s CO₂ supply shortage and supporting industry decarbonisation.

🇫🇷 French startup Yama launched the country’s first direct air capture pilot plant, scaling its proprietary electrochemical system 56-fold in one year to capture 22 tonnes of CO₂ annually with record-low energy use of 1,250 kWh per ton.

Chemicals x Climate

⚗️ British biotech Scindo raised €4.5 million in a round co-led by Kadmos Capital and Clay Capital with participation from PINC, Synbioven, AgFunder, SOSV, Farvatn Venture and Savantus Ventures. It uses an AI-driven enzyme discovery platform to create sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based chemicals, and it will use the funds to scale its technology.

🧪 Germany’s enaDyne secured €7 million seed funding in a round co-led by Amadeus APEX Technology Fund and Energy Capital Ventures, with participation from Antares Ventures, Possible Ventures, and returning angels, to scale its plasma-catalysis reactors that convert CO₂ and other gases into sustainable chemicals and build a modular pilot plant by 2026.

Construction x Climate

🏗️ Vienna-based Optimuse secured €4 million seed funding from seed + speed Ventures, Blum Ventures, Matterwave Ventures, and Gründungsfonds to scale its AI platform that optimises building design and renovation for lower costs and emissions.

🤖 Swiss building automation startup viboo raised €3.3 million in a seed funding round led by Realyze Ventures and Zürcher Kantonalbank to expand its AI-powered energy efficiency platform into Germany and advance building decarbonisation.

Energy x Climate

🪫 Swiss battery startup Unbound Potential secured €14 million in one of Europe’s largest pre-seed rounds, backed by Founderful, Kvanted, another.vc, and Zürcher Kantonalbank, to accelerate its tech development and partnerships.

🇦🇺 Melbourne-based Amber raised $10 million from UK energy supplier E.ON Next and Australian investor Virescent Ventures to expand its home battery and EV automation platform into overseas markets, enabling households to optimise energy use, storage, and sales against real-time wholesale prices.

🔋 US startup Anode Technology Company emerged from stealth with $9 million seed funding from a round led by Eclipse to develop mobile battery systems for EV charging, construction sites, and live events as cleaner, cost-efficient alternatives to diesel generators.

🔥 Germany’s Factor2 Energy raised €7.7 million seed funding in a round led by At One Ventures with participation from High-Tech Gründerfonds, Gründerfonds Ruhr, Verve Ventures, and Siemens Energy Ventures to advance its CO₂-based geothermal power system and build a pilot plant to demonstrate scalability.

☀️ Warsaw-based sun.store secured €6 million in a seed funding round co-led by Contrarian Ventures, Market One Capital, and Movens Capital to scale its B2B digital marketplace for solar, PV, and battery components across Europe, aiming to replace fragmented offline procurement with a transparent, efficient platform.

⚛️ Commonwealth Fusion Systems signed a $1 billion+ power purchase agreement with Italian energy giant Eni for electricity from its first 400MW fusion reactor, set to open in Virginia in the early 2030s.

⁉️ The US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has reportedly been instructed by a Trump appointee to avoid terms such as climate change, decarbonisation, sustainability, and emissions, reflecting the administration’s opposition to renewable energy framing despite record global investment in clean energy.

🥒 Take a look: Turning a pickle into an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode).

FinTech x Climate

🔢 Paris-based responsible investment platform Goodvest raised €12 million in a Series B funding round led by Serena with participation from Ring Capital, Polytechnique Ventures, ALM Innovation, Globivest, and business angels, to expand its Paris Agreement–aligned savings and wealth management offerings.

Funds x Climate

💶 Paris-based VC firm Serena closed €200 million for its fourth flagship fund, Serena IV, which will invest up to €15 million in applied AI and energy transition startups.

💸 C4 Ventures launched its third €100 million fund to back early-stage AI and deep tech startups across Europe, aiming to build global leaders in fields such as robotics, quantum computing, and AI semiconductors.

💵 Toyota-backed Woven Capital launched its $800 million Fund II to back growth-stage deep tech, mobility, and climate tech companies, with a strong focus on Europe and scaling pilots to production.

💲NRMA Insurance awarded its first $100,000 Help Fund grants to five Australian climate tech startups - DNA Energy, FloodMapp, GeoNadir, Rainstick, and VALAI - as part of a $1 million program with Climate Salad to support scalable resilience solutions against extreme weather.

Materials x Climate

🔋 Germany’s cylib secured a €26.1 million EU grant to build an industrial-scale battery recycling facility in Dormagen, using its OLiC technology to recover over 90% of critical materials from EV batteries with 80% lower carbon emissions, and set to process up to 140,000 units annually from 2027.

💡 US startup Electroflow, which is developing a three-step electrochemical process to turn brines into lithium-iron-phosphate materials, secured $10 million seed funding in a round led by Union Square Ventures and Voyager to build a domestic supply chain that it claims can undercut Chinese producers by up to 40%.

♻️ Bangalore-based B2B plastic-recycling marketplace Recove raised ₹5.3 crore (~USD $640,000) in a pre-seed funding round led by Momentum Capital. It will use the funds to expand its operations.

🤝 Evonik and AMSilk have expanded their partnership with a long-term agreement and a dedicated production line in Slovakia to manufacture silk proteins for fashion and automotive applications at industrial scale.

🏡 Did you know we insulate our homes in plastic?

Methane x Climate

🐮 Massachusetts-based ArkeaBio, which is developing a vaccine to reduce livestock methane emissions, raised $7 million at the first close of its Series A+ round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and AgriZeroNZ, to advance its program from animal studies to large-scale field trials.

Mobility x Climate

🛤️ Einride has achieved the world’s first cabless, electric, fully autonomous cross-border delivery, successfully operating without a human driver at Norway’s Ørje crossing as part of the EU-backed MODI project to advance autonomous freight transport.

🔌 French EV charging scaleup Waat raised €100 million in a round led by DWS and Bpifrance, bringing its total funding to €130 million, to expand its profitable EV charging infrastructure business across Europe and grow from 20k to 250k charging points by 2030.

✈️ OXCCU, a University of Oxford spinout developing sustainable aviation fuel from waste carbon, raised a £20.75 million Series B round led by new investors Orlen VC, Safran Corporate Ventures, International Airlines Group, Hostplus, and TCVC, with participation from existing backers Clean Energy Ventures, IP Group, Aramco Ventures, Eni Next, Braavos Capital, and the University of Oxford.

🚗 California-based EV startup Telo secured $20 million Series A funding from investors including Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to develop its compact MT1 electric truck, designed for urban drivers, with production planned for 2026.

🤝 Dott has partnered with Segway to launch 6,000 next-generation e-bikes in Paris under a new four-year, €10 million contract.

🛫 18 months to deliver on time, on budget: the hydrogen propulsion of the plane, full-scale, is ready.

Water x Climate

💦 University of Alberta researchers have developed a dual-functionalised lignin material that can remove up to 96% of toxic azo dyes from wastewater, offering a low-cost, sustainable solution to textile pollution.

💧Rapid water testing pioneer FREDsense raised $7 million Series A funding in a round led by HG Ventures with Emerald Technology Ventures to scale its field-based PFAS detector, enabling industries to get same-day contamination results instead of weeks-long lab delays.

🐟 Interesting: Supersized clownfish robots are coming to waterways in the Middle East.

Weddings x Climate

💍 What happens when you carbon label your own wedding menu?

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Editorial by Laura, Curation by Nicola