💎 Vol 155: Nanodiamonds without Pressure

Hi there

This week, we caught up with 25 investors to hear who are their 'ones to watch' across North America.

Together, they highlighted 75 exciting companies scaling across the continent, ranging from geothermal heating and cooling, to rebuilding North America’s rare-earth supply chain, scaling battery-electric railcars, and advancing sustainable aviation fuels.

Hear from top tier investors incl Lowercarbon Capital, SOSV, DCVC, Collab Fund, LDV Capital, New System Ventures, Streetlife Ventures, Remarkable Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Frankenbuild Ventures, Pangaea Ventures and more.

In this week’s edition:

💸 Endgame Capital secured €8 million at the first close of its debut Climate Tech fund.
🛰️ Space4Good closed a funding round to accelerate its mission of protecting 50 million hectares of tropical rainforest with satellite-based analytics and predictive AI. 
🥵 Mazama Energy drilled the world’s hottest geothermal well, reaching 331°C and capable of producing up to 5 gigawatts of clean, 24/7 power.

The Digest

📉 What’s down? MycoWorks announced it will stop growing mycelium and focus solely on processing it, marking a strategic shift just months after debuting its Reishi biomaterial in the luxury furniture market.

🎯 Applications are open for Cohort 6 of Breakthrough Energy Fellows. The program focuses on technologies that have the potential, at scale, to reduce or capture greenhouse gases by at least 500 million tons per year or technologies that meaningfully address adaptation to climate change.

🚀 The BEAM Circular Accelerator is opened applications for its next cohort - a collaborative initiative between BEAM Circular, a nonprofit building a vibrant regional ecosystem for the circular bioeconomy in California's agricultural heartland, and gener8tor, a global venture firm and accelerator network.

AgriFood x Climate

🛤️ California-based agtech Agtonomy raised $18 million in a Series B funding round led by DBL Partners, with participation from Nuveen, Autotech, Allison Transmission, Rethink Food, and Black Forest Ventures, to scale its AI-powered farm autonomy platform that embeds “physical AI” into agricultural machinery.

🌽 Plastomics raised $5.8 million Series B funding. The round was led by Fulcrum Global Capital, Lewis & Clark Partners, and others, and it will use the funds to advance its chloroplast engineering platform, expanding from its soybean success to corn and accelerating field trials to enhance insect- and herbicide-resistant crop traits.

🧬 US-based Food System Innovations received a $2 million investment from the Bezos Earth Fund’s AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge to develop AI tools for improving sustainable protein design in collaboration with Stanford University.

✅ France’s Parima has become the first European startup approved to sell cultivated meat for human consumption, after receiving regulatory clearance from the Singapore Food Agency for its cultivated chicken.

Biodiversity x Climate

🌳 Environmental insights scale-up Space4Good has closed a funding round led by Arches Capital to accelerate its mission of protecting 50 million hectares of tropical rainforest at scale with satellite-based analytics and predictive AI. 

🔥 ReSeed, a Greece-based nonprofit startup founded by high school students, uses AI-powered drones to reforest wildfire-affected areas and restore pollinator habitats by deploying seed bombs that enable fast, low-cost, and data-driven replanting, helping to rebuild ecosystems and sequester carbon across the country.

Carbon x Climate

🌫️ Cambridge-based Immaterial raised €15.4 million in a Series A2 round led by SLB, with participation from AP Ventures, Moeve, Finindus, and others, to scale its proprietary monolithic metal–organic framework technology for industrial decarbonisation applications such as carbon capture, hydrogen storage, and HVAC energy reduction.

👀 Good read: Why 2025 has seen a flood of new ways to count carbon.

Energy x Climate

🥵 Oregon-based Mazama Energy has drilled the world’s hottest geothermal well, reaching 331°C and capable of producing up to 5 gigawatts of clean, 24/7 power, marking a major step toward scalable, low-cost, carbon-free geothermal energy.

💡 Dracula Technologies, a pioneer in battery-free IoT powered by ambient indoor light, closed a €30 million Series A round led by Banque des Territoires with participation from MGI Digital Technology Group and new investor EIC Fund, to scale production of its printed organic photovoltaic modules and expand global deployment of its sustainable energy-harvesting technology.

🔌 COI Energy, based in the US, has developed a patented marketplace that lets enterprises trade unused electricity capacity in real time, helping reduce waste, cut costs, and support community energy access through its “Kilowatt for Good” initiative, backed by investors including Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures and Kachuwa Impact Fund.

📈 Google has partnered with NextEra Energy to reopen the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa, which closed in 2020, aiming to restart the 601-megawatt reactor by 2029, with Google set to purchase most of the plant’s zero-carbon electricity for 25 years to power its expanding data center network.

♨️ UK startup HotGreen Solutions raised a pre-seed funding round led by Empirical Ventures, First Imagine!, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, and others to build and deploy its high-temperature industrial heat pump demonstrator, featuring a novel compressor designed to meet industrial process needs.

Funds x Climate

💰 Endgame Capital secured €8 million at the first close of its debut climate tech fund, aiming to back near-market solutions that cut emissions cost-effectively and at scale, with a focus on technologies deployable within two years and capable of mitigating over 50 Mt CO₂e annually.

Materials x Climate

💎 Scientists at the University of Tokyo have discovered a method to grow nanodiamonds from organic molecules using electron beams instead of heat or pressure, a breakthrough that redefines atomic-scale chemistry and could transform materials science, quantum technology, and our understanding of natural diamond formation.

🍘 Australian sustainable materials startup Uluu secured $16 million in a Series A round led by Burda Principal Investments, with backing from Main Sequence, Novel Investments, and others, to build a commercial facility that converts seaweed into biodegradable, carbon-sequestering plastic alternatives for use across packaging, textiles, and consumer goods.

🧪 Boston-based MacroCycle has developed an energy-efficient chemical recycling process that recovers high-quality synthetic fibres from waste textiles without breaking down polymers, using 80% less energy than virgin plastic production, and has raised $6.5 million seed funding to scale its technology for cost-parity recycled polyester.

♻️ German startup aevoloop raised €3.25 million in a seed funding round led by Circulate Capital, alongside nearly €5 million in public co-funding from the ERDF and Saxony’s SAB. It will use the funds to commercialise its patented circular-plastic technology that enables fully recyclable, biodegradable polyolefins compatible with existing manufacturing systems.

🎨 SAGES, based in London, secured £190,000 from the British Design Fund to commercialise its biodegradable, food-waste-derived dye technology, which replaces petroleum-based synthetic dyes with water-soluble, eco-friendly colourants made from waste materials like onion skins, coffee, and blueberries for use in fashion and textiles.

⛏️ Rhodium’s hidden opportunity for the US, who imports 100% of it.

🌱 Interesting: Sugarcane has emerged as a promising alternative to petroleum-based plastics, but here’s why you should tread carefully.

🍙 Good question: What’s the point of making clothing out of seaweed.

Mobility x Climate

🚲 Amsterdam-based micro-mobility company Dott secured an additional $70 million through Nordic bonds and a Series B extension, bringing its total Series B funding to over $150 million, to expand its e-bike rollout and market presence following its 2024 merger with TIER.

🇦🇺 Brisbane-based Hypersonix Launch Systems raised $46 million in a Series A funding round led by High Tor Capital, with backing from Saab, RKKVC, the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, and QIC, to advance its hydrogen-powered, 3D-printed hypersonic aircraft engines and UAVs.

🏍️ Brazilian startup Vammo secured $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund, with backing from Qualcomm Ventures, 2150, and Construct Capital, to expand its in-house battery-swapping network for electric motorcycles across Latin America.

🔌 Germany’s Hyperdrives has developed a mass-producible hollow-conductor cooling technology that delivers tenfold better heat dissipation and twice the power density of conventional EV motors.

Daily Life x Climate

Taboo x Climate

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

Love it😁 Meh 😐 Hate it🙁

Editorial by Laura, Curation by Nicola