🎄 Vol 162: Real vs Fake Christmas Tree Debate

Hi there

It’s been a year of ups and downs: shutdowns, regulatory shifts, breakthrough technologies, and fresh fundings in ClimateTech. We’ve done our best to keep track here.

Amid all of the headlines, our 24 Ambassadors have been pulling all the strings to bring the community together and hosted 25 Meetups for 2,000+ attendees. Did you join us?

Highlights included pub quizzing, mountain running, forest gatherings and warmups and side events for COP30, World AI Week, Web Summit and the HackSummit.

Take a closer look at what they’ve been up to. And we hope to see you in 2026 at the HackSummit on April 22-23, or at a local Meetup near you.

Here’s to a bright 2026 🌈

In this week’s edition:

⚛️ Radiant Nuclear raised more than $300 million to develop a transportable 1MW microreactor for data centers and industrial sites.
🇩🇰 PSV Hafnium closed its first €60 million fund to invest in around 25 Nordic science-driven startups.
🪶 Everbloom, a materials startup backed by more than $8 million from investors is using AI and upcycled keratin waste from chicken feathers to create biodegradable textile fibres that mimic cashmere and polyester

The Digest

👀 Good Read: Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe explains why President Trump’s move to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research is “like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet”.

🗽 Kickstart 2026 by joining the inaugural Deep Tech New York (DTNY) summit on January 28th, gathering 300+ of the best founders, investors, scholars, and innovators in New York City. 

🎄 Is an artificial Christmas tree better than a natural tree?

📖 Liberation Labs released an Industrial Biotechnology Handbook with lesseons learned from 100 biotech ventures.

AgriFood x Climate

​​🧀 Belgium-based precision fermentation startup Those Vegan Cowboys raised €6.25 million to scale production of its animal-free, dairy-identical casein protein and move its cheese, yoghurt and chocolate applications toward commercialisation.

☕️ Wakuli raised a €5 million Series A funding round led by the European Circular Bioeconomy Fund with Rabobank, and joined by ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund and Icecat Capital, to scale its regenerative coffee model built around farmer partnerships, living incomes and major emissions reductions.

🏭 Scottish biotech MiAlgae has started building a commercial-scale facility in Grangemouth, backed by a £3 million UK government investment, to upcycle whisky byproducts into fish-free algal omega-3 and significantly scale production ahead of a planned 2026 opening.

🍳 Tallinn-based ÄIO secured a €1.2 million Enterprise Estonia grant to advance its €2.3 million FERM-OIL project, scaling fermentation-derived, non-animal fats and oils made from wood and agricultural side-streams toward industrial food production.

Carbon x Climate

💨 Carbonfuture has surpassed 1.5 million tonnes of facilitated durable carbon removal and closed a Series A2 funding round led by SIX with participation from Idemitsu Americas Holdings, following the industry’s first megatonne-scale biochar removal deal delivered with Microsoft and Exomad Green using its Trust Infrastructure.

Energy x Climate

⚛️ Radiant Nuclear raised more than $300 million in a funding round led by Draper Associates and Boost VC at a $1.8 billion valuation to develop a transportable 1MW microreactor for data centers and industrial sites.

💸 London-based Fuse Energy, founded by former Revolut executives, secured $70 million in a funding round led by Balderton Capital and Lowercarbon Capital at a $5 billion valuation to accelerate international expansion of its vertically integrated energy platform.

⚡️ Australian grid-monitoring startup IND Technology raised $50 million in a funding round led by Angeleno Group and Energy Impact Partners, with backing from Edison International and Virescent Ventures, to scale its machine-learning–powered powerline fault detection systems designed to prevent bushfires and grid failures globally.

🍻 Future Greens, a UK–based startup developing fast, modular bioreactors that convert food and brewery waste into heat and power, raised €569,000 in a funding round backed by PXN Group, One Planet Capital, Baltic Ventures, Venture.Community and Lifted Ventures, which it will use to further develop its ten-times-faster anaerobic digestion technology.

💥 Fusion startup Thea Energy unveiled a pixel-like stellarator reactor design that uses arrays of identical superconducting magnets and software-driven controls to tolerate manufacturing imperfections, aiming to lower the cost and complexity of fusion power on the path to commercial-scale plants.

☀️ Naked Energy launched the UK’s first dedicated system design service to help commercial and industrial customers plan and integrate its high-efficiency solar thermal and hybrid solar technologies into optimised, multi-technology heat decarbonisation systems.

🔋Australia’s federal government has overhauled its A$2.3 billion Cheaper Home Batteries Program by nearly tripling funding to A$7.2 billion and reducing subsidies for oversized systems after rapid uptake and cost blowouts revealed the scheme was disproportionately supporting large, expensive home batteries.

👀 Good Read: As AI collides with the energy transition, where does it actually make sense? Planet A investor Jessica Burley explores where AI is already proving its worth in energy systems, where the hype outpaces reality, and how better demand control could reshape the grid over time.

Funds x Climate

🇩🇰 Danish deeptech spinout fund PSV Hafnium closed its first €60 million fund to invest in around 25 Nordic science-driven startups emerging from research institutions, backed by the European Investment Fund, Danish sovereign fund EIFO, PSV Foundry and other investors to help bridge the gap from lab to market in areas like quantum, clean energy and science-based AI. 

🚩 Vincent Touati-Tomas shares 8 red flags you might find in a VC.

Materials x Climate

🪶 Everbloom, a materials startup backed by more than $8 million from investors including Hoxton Ventures and SOSV, is using AI and upcycled keratin waste from chicken feathers to create biodegradable textile fibres that mimic cashmere and polyester, aiming to replace unsustainable animal-derived materials at lower cost.

🧽 A&B Smart Materials raised an oversubscribed £1.5 million pre-seed funding round backed by Triple Impact Ventures alongside Sake Bosch, Caesar Ventures and LIVING HOPE VC to develop fully biodegradable, bio-based alternatives to fossil-derived superabsorbent polymers used in disposable hygiene products.

🇦🇺 Australian startup Uluu secured $1.5 million from the Government of Western Australia’s Carbon Innovation Grants Program to scale production of its plastic-free, climate-positive materials in partnership with global brands.

🪡 Indian luxury fashion brand Jiwya Textiles raised $350,000 from UAE-based Kiara Luxe Holdings to scale its plant-based, biodegradable “soil-to-soil” textile model globally and invest in production, artisan partnerships, and R&D.

👖 Good watch: A startup to stop jeans poisoning our oceans.

Mobility x Climate

🚲 London-based e-bike rental startup Forest has partnered with Octopus Energy as its official energy provider, supplying zero-carbon electricity to its 20,000-bike fleet across the capital from December.

🚢 Maritime electrification startup Pyxis secured S$13 million at the first close of its S$18 million growth round, backed by investors including Shift4Good, Motion Ventures and MOL PLUS, to scale electric vessels, charging infrastructure and its Electra™ operating system across Asia.

Holidays Ad x Climate

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Editorial by Laura, Curation by Nicola