🦫 Vol 174: The Wombattery of long-duration storage

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Venture capital is playing an increasingly decisive role in shaping the future of climate, deep tech, and industrial transformation.

Over the past decade, capital flowing into climate tech alone has grown from a niche category into a multi-billion-euro opportunity, with Europe emerging as one of the most active regions globally.

Our list of 180 must-know VC partners highlights the General Partners behind Europe’s most active VCs.

Their thesis-driven capital targets hard problems with long timelines, like decarbonising supply chains, reinventing materials, and rebuilding how we produce food at scale.

In this week’s edition: 

🚀 Starcloud raises $170M to build solar-powered data centres in space
🌊 PuriFire’s tech that turns wastewater into green fuels
🔋 tozero opens Europe’s first industrial-scale battery recycling plant

The Digest

🇪🇺 Good Read: Ahead of HackSummit, April 22-23, we caught up with Sifted to share how Europe’s deeptech edge could become a global advantage if the region can better translate innovation into scalable, commercial success. 

🚀 US-based Starcloud raised $170 million, in a Series A funding round led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures, to build space-based data centres powered by continuous solar energy.

🇯🇵 Japan-based TODA Advanced Materials is shutting its pCAM plant in Sarnia, Ontario - one of the only large-scale facilities in the West producing a key battery material - highlighting a major gap in local supply chains and the difficulty of building a fully circular battery industry without this step.

🌍 EarthScale is a free, UK-wide 12-month programme helping IP-rich climate tech ventures to scale, navigate manufacturing and raise Series A funding. Apply here before 13th April.

AgriFood x Climate

🇫🇷 French precision fermentation company Standing Ovation raised €30 million in a Series B funding round backed by investors including Bpifrance, Crédit Mutuel Innovation, Bel Group, Danone Ventures and Astanor. It will use the funds to scale commercial rollout of its animal-free casein and expand into global markets.

🇳🇱 The Dutch Research Council awarded €4.1 million to three cellular agriculture projects under the National Growth Fund programme to advance cultivated meat and precision fermentation technologies, with the funding aimed at scaling production and reducing costs.

🥕 Austrian startup Afreshed has acquired German rival Etepetete to consolidate the “ugly produce” food waste market in the DACH region, alongside securing a mid-seven-figure investment from Raiffeisen-Holding Niederösterreich-Wien to fund its expansion into Germany and further develop its tech-driven logistics and route-optimisation platform.

🥛 Mississippi has passed legislation banning the sale of lab-grown dairy products, including cell-cultured milk, becoming the first US state to extend cultivated meat restrictions to dairy.

Construction x Climate

🏡 Germany’s ecoworks secured €23 million to deploy its AI-powered serial renovation technology to modernise residential buildings at scale, with the funding supporting the rollout of Germany’s largest neighbourhood-scale retrofit project and accelerating climate-neutral housing upgrades. 

🧱 Swedish startup Enkei closed a pre-seed funding round backed by investors including Anders Lendager, Christina Åqvist, Ulf Mattsson, Fabian Månsson and RadCap to scale its circular materials platform that converts construction waste into design-grade materials.

Energy x Climate

👽 TerraSpark, based in Belgium, raised over €5 million pre-seed funding from investors including Daphni, better ventures, the Hans(wo)men Group and strategic angels to develop space-based solar power systems, starting with radio frequency wireless energy transmission on Earth before scaling to orbital infrastructure.

🔥 Switzerland-based SolidWatts raised €1.9 million seed funding from investors including Evercurious VC, Kickfund, Axel Carbon Capital, Uni.Fund and Loggerhead Ventures to scale its solid-state RF industrial heating platform, which uses high-efficiency dielectric heating to replace fossil fuel systems.

🚢 UK startup PuriFire Energys unveiled its proprietary hydrothermal gasification technology that converts wastewater and carbon waste into green hydrogen and bio-methanol for maritime fuel.

🗺️ Interesting: Victor Angot shared this European ecosystem map of critical raw materials.

Funds x Climate

🇸🇬 Singapore-based Circulate Capital raised $220 million at the first close of its Asia Fund II from investors including The Coca-Cola Company, Danone, Dow and Procter & Gamble to back circular economy businesses, with the fund set to scale recycling and circular supply chains across South and Southeast Asia.

👩🏻‍🔬 UK startup Empirical Ventures secured a £10 million commitment from the British Business Bank to invest in “venture scientists” building deeptech and life science startups, with the funding aimed at enabling larger early-stage investments and helping scientists commercialise breakthrough research into scalable companies.

Materials x Climate

🔋Germany’s tozero opened Europe’s first industrial-scale battery recycling plant using its proprietary hydrometallurgical process to recover high-purity lithium and graphite from lithium-ion batteries, designed to reduce reliance on imported critical materials.

🇫🇮 Finland-based Sensmet secured €1.5 million from EIT RawMaterials to scale its µDOES (Micro-Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy) technology for real-time, multi-metal monitoring in liquid processes, with the funding set to expand deployment across battery metals production, recycling and other critical raw material value chains.

Mobility x Climate

✈️ Switzerland-based Metafuels secured a €1.92 million grant from the Dutch government to advance its Rotterdam e-SAF project, which uses proprietary methanol-to-jet “aerobrew” technology to produce scalable sustainable aviation fuel.

🔋 April Fool x Climate

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Editorial and curation by Nicola