Climate startup ecosystem
We track 17 organisations in this sector across 6+ countries.
Showing 17 of 17 Climate
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2150
2150 is a Copenhagen and London based climate fund focused on technology that makes cities more sustainable. Backed by real estate operator NREP, the fund invests in Construction Tech, Energy Efficiency, low carbon materials, and urban infrastructure startups. 2150 provides both capital and pilot access through its built environment network, helping startups validate solutions in real world projects. It is one of the most prominent climate tech funds headquartered in Denmark.
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Accelerate Green
Accelerate Green is Ireland's flagship climate-tech and sustainability accelerator, launched in 2021 and operated by state energy company Bord na Móna in partnership with Resolve Partners and ERINN Innovation, part-funded by the European Commission's LIFE Programme and a €5M Bord na Móna commitment. Based at a dedicated hub beside Lough Boora in Co. Offaly, it takes no equity and runs an eight-module series of residential workshops, mentoring and site visits over roughly four months, culminating in a public showcase conference. The programme runs two tracks — GROW for established climate-focused SMEs and START for early-stage founders — and gives participants access to Bord na Móna as a reference customer and pilot partner. Focus sectors span renewable energy, circular economy, carbon capture, sustainable agriculture and low-carbon mobility across the island of Ireland. Since 2022 it has supported 60+ companies across five cohorts, with alumni including EpiSensor, CameraMatics, Hibra Design and Volta Robotics.
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ACE Incubator
Launched 2013 by Amsterdam Center for Entrepreneurship. 12-week program for science and high-tech ventures from local universities; provides mentorship, workshops, and up to EUR 25K pre-seed. Notable spinoffs: Skytree, Knowingo. Scope: Regional (Amsterdam).
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ACT Venture Capital
ACT Venture Capital is Ireland's most established and most active venture firm, founded in 1994 and headquartered in Dublin. Over three decades it has backed more than 140 Irish and European technology companies, raising over €600M across six funds — including its largest, a €140M fund closed in 2022 — and generating dozens of exits with a combined enterprise value of around €4.6bn. Its limited partners include the European Investment Fund, Enterprise Ireland, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and AIB, several of whom have backed the firm for more than twenty years. Led by Managing Partner John Flynn alongside General Partners Debbie Rennick and John O'Sullivan, ACT invests from seed to expansion stage with cheques up to €10M across software, AI, deep tech, health tech, energy and fintech in Ireland and the UK. Landmark outcomes include the $400M sale of UWB semiconductor company Decawave to Qorvo (2020), the acquisition of digital-mental-health platform SilverCloud Health by Amwell (2021), and SoftBank's €473M investment into connected-vehicle company Cubic Telecom at a €900M+ valuation (2024). Recent active deals include AI pathology company Deciphex and energy-optimisation platform GridBeyond.
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Ada Ventures
Ada Ventures is a London-based pre-seed and seed fund founded in 2019 by Check (Francesca) Warner MBE and Matt Bradley, focused on backing diverse founders building breakthrough technology across climate equity, economic empowerment, and healthy ageing. The firm closed its first fund at $50 million and raised a second fund of £63 million in March 2024, bringing total assets under management to over £100 million. Ada distinguishes itself as Europe's first VC fund explicitly designed to address underrepresentation in the startup ecosystem, investing £250K–£1M per company and running a scout and angel programme to surface talent overlooked by traditional networks.
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Climeworks
Climeworks is one of Europe's most important climate-tech companies because it is building commercial direct air capture systems that remove carbon dioxide from ambient air. The company operates in a category that sits beyond emissions reduction alone: carbon removal infrastructure intended to address legacy emissions and hard-to-abate sectors. Its plants use modular collectors and specialized filters to capture CO2, after which the gas can be permanently stored or used in industrial processes. That combination of chemical engineering, energy systems, project execution, and long-term offtake sales makes Climeworks a very different kind of startup from software-led climate businesses. It is a capital-intensive industrial platform that depends on trust, scientific credibility, and customer willingness to commit to the future carbon-removal market. In the European ecosystem, Climeworks matters not only for its own category leadership, but also because it shows that globally significant climate infrastructure can be conceived, financed, and scaled from Europe. It serves as a benchmark for founders and investors interested in hard-tech and climate infrastructure companies where the technical ambition, funding requirements, and operational complexity are far greater than in conventional SaaS.
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EIT Climate-KIC Accelerator (Berlin)
EIT Climate-KIC — now operating as Climate KIC — is Europe's leading climate innovation agency and accelerator, founded in 2010 as one of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology's first Knowledge and Innovation Communities. Headquartered in Amsterdam and active across 50 countries, it has supported more than 2,300 startups generating €1.1bn in investment, 15,000 jobs and 790 new products over 15 years, transitioning to an independent public-benefit foundation in 2025. Its flagship ClimAccelerator is a multi-stage, equity-free programme offering up to €95,000 in grant-style support plus coaching and investor matchmaking, spanning cleantech, clean energy, circular economy, sustainable cities and agri-food. In Germany the DACH hub runs from the EUREF-Campus in Berlin-Schöneberg — home to the Green Garage climate incubator — alongside a Munich node. Alumni include Climeworks (Switzerland), tado° and Thermondo (Germany) and Ÿnsect (France).
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Founders Factory
Founders Factory is a London-based venture studio and accelerator founded in 2015 by Brent Hoberman, Henry Lane Fox, and George Northcott. The firm co-builds and accelerates pre-seed and seed stage startups across fintech, health, climate, media, and consumer sectors, operating sector-specific programmes with corporate partners including Aviva, L'Oréal, and Deutsche Telekom. Since launch, Founders Factory has backed over 300 companies globally, which have collectively raised more than $800 million in follow-on funding. Its venture studio model — co-founding businesses from day zero — distinguishes it from conventional accelerators and gives it a distinctive builder-investor role in the European ecosystem.
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Infarm
Infarm was a Berlin-based indoor vertical farming startup founded in 2013 by brothers Erez and Guy Galonska along with Osnat Michaeli. The company deployed modular hydroponic farming units inside supermarkets, restaurants, and distribution centers, growing herbs and leafy greens close to the point of consumption. At its peak, Infarm raised over $600 million from investors including Atomico, Balderton, and LGT Lightstone, and operated across Germany, France, the UK, and North America. The company restructured significantly in 2022-2023 after rapid expansion outpaced unit economics, making it a cautionary tale in European agritech about scaling hardware-heavy models.
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Lightrock
Lightrock is an impact-focused growth equity platform backed by LGT Group, the private banking and asset management group owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein. Founded in 2019 as a spin-out from LGT's direct private equity activities, Lightrock deploys growth equity tickets of €10–50M into companies demonstrating measurable positive impact across climate, health, and financial inclusion. The firm operates from London with offices in Basel, New Delhi, São Paulo, and other cities, giving it an unusually broad emerging-market reach alongside its European portfolio. Notable portfolio companies include Bima, Karma Kitchen, and Proxona. Lightrock occupies a distinctive position in European impact investing: it combines the balance sheet credibility of a century-old royal banking group with a focused mandate, operational on-the-ground presence, and a willingness to invest in geographies and sectors that conventional growth equity skips. For Swiss and European founders building in healthcare access, climate solutions, or financial inclusion, Lightrock is one of the few growth-stage investors that evaluates impact metrics alongside financial ones.
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Mewery
Mewery is a food-tech and biotech startup cultivating pork meat using microalgae-based processes. The hybrid approach reduces the cost and complexity of lab-grown meat by combining cell cultivation with plant inputs. This positions the company to deliver cultured meat products faster and at lower price points than traditional cellular agriculture methods. By 2026, Mewery is a notable Central European pioneer in sustainable protein.
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Neoplants
Neoplants is one of Europe's most consumer-friendly deep-tech startups, known for engineering "plants with a purpose." Its flagship product, Neo P1, is a golden pothos that has been genetically modified to actively metabolize volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as formaldehyde and benzene—pollutants common in homes due to paint, furniture, and cleaning products. Rather than simply filtering air passively, the plant converts toxins into harmless sugars and amino acids, turning living organisms into functional indoor air purifiers. The company began commercial sales in the United States, where GMO consumer regulations are more permissive, but 2026 marks a strategic pivot back to Europe. Neoplants is positioning itself to launch in the UK and select EU markets as the New Genomic Techniques (NGT) framework evolves. This regulatory shift is crucial: it could unlock a path for consumer biotech products to be sold in Europe at scale. Neoplants is actively engaging with regulators and policymakers to ensure its products meet safety and transparency standards, framing its technology as a climate and public-health benefit rather than a controversial GMO niche. Neoplants is also a serious biotech company under the consumer-friendly brand. It operates a 12,000-square-foot R&D facility in Saint-Ouen, Paris, with capabilities closer to a pharma lab than a greenhouse. The 2026 R&D pipeline includes plants engineered to capture CO2 at orders-of-magnitude higher rates than typical trees, targeting corporate offices and commercial spaces where sustainability investments must be visible and measurable. That positions Neoplants for a dual-market strategy: consumer air purification today, B2B climate infrastructure tomorrow. The company's ecosystem roots are strong. The founders, Lionel Mora and Patrick Torbey, met at Entrepreneur First in Paris, and Neoplants was an early resident at Station F. It also benefited from the Wilco healthcare and biotech accelerator. Its investors reflect the blend of deep-tech and consumer focus: True Ventures led the seed, Heartcore Capital and Collaborative Fund support the consumer angle, and angels such as Niklas Zennstrom and Xavier Niel provide strategic visibility. In 2026, Neoplants represents a "solarpunk" vision of European tech—advanced biology that is both functional and approachable, turning climate and health solutions into products people can live with.
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Norrsken Impact Accelerator
Founded 2016 by the Norrsken Foundation. Eight-week impact accelerator selecting 20 startups annually; offers USD 125K for 5% equity and mentorship from global tech leaders. Focus on climate, health, and education. Scope: International.
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Northvolt
Northvolt is one of the most consequential climate-tech companies ever built in Europe because it attempted to establish a continental battery manufacturing base for the electric era. The company became a flagship industrial project by combining battery-cell production, recycling ambitions, and strategic partnerships with European automotive and industrial players. That vision mattered well beyond Sweden: Northvolt symbolized Europe's effort to reduce dependence on external battery supply chains and to anchor advanced manufacturing capacity closer to regional customers. Its story is also a reminder that deep industrial startups operate under very different constraints than software companies. Battery manufacturing requires enormous capex, long build cycles, complex procurement, and tight execution across energy, materials, logistics, and customer contracts. Even with that complexity and its later financial distress, Northvolt remains central to understanding Europe's climate and industrial-tech ecosystem because it reset expectations for how ambitious startup-backed manufacturing on the continent could be. In directory terms, Northvolt broadens the picture beyond software and marketplaces by representing the hardware-heavy, infrastructure-scale side of innovation that shapes the future of transport, energy resilience, and industrial policy across Europe.
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Stegra
Stegra (formerly H2 Green Steel) is one of Europe’s most ambitious industrial decarbonization projects, aiming to rebuild steelmaking around renewable energy and green hydrogen. The company is building a fully integrated production campus in Boden, northern Sweden, where abundant hydropower and regional mining supply chains converge. The core innovation is the direct-reduction process: instead of using coal to reduce iron ore, Stegra uses green hydrogen, cutting CO2 emissions by roughly 95% compared with blast-furnace steel. That technical shift is the foundation for a new European supply of low-carbon steel, which is increasingly demanded by automakers, construction firms, and consumer brands. The company rebranded to Stegra in September 2024 to signal that it is more than a steel mill. Its long-term platform vision is to combine renewable power, hydrogen production, and mineral processing into a repeatable template for heavy industry. By 2026, the Boden plant is reported to be more than halfway constructed, with gigascale electrolyzers (supplied by Thyssenkrupp Nucera) being installed and key offtake contracts signed. Customers reportedly include Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Scania, and IKEA, and more than half of initial output has been pre-sold — a strong indicator that the “green premium” market is real. Stegra’s financing structure is as notable as its technology. Rather than relying solely on venture capital, the company blends project-finance debt with growth equity, totaling more than €6.5 billion in commitments. This makes it one of the largest private industrial raises in Europe and a flagship case for climate infrastructure funding. Its origins are tied to Vargas Holding, a Swedish venture-builder that also co-founded Northvolt and Polarium, acting as an institutional co-founder rather than a conventional accelerator. Early support from EIT InnoEnergy helped validate the project at the EU level. Stegra’s investor roster reflects its strategic importance: Altor Equity Partners, GIC, Just Climate, Temasek, and Porsche SE are among its backers. In 2026, Stegra represents the “Northvolt effect” done right: a proof that Europe can re-industrialize around clean energy and keep advanced manufacturing on the continent. If it succeeds, it will be a template for decarbonizing other hard-to-abate sectors, from cement to fertilizers, and a cornerstone of Europe’s green-industry competitiveness.
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Verkor
Verkor is the industrial champion of the French "Battery Valley" and one of Europe's most important energy manufacturing plays. While many battery startups emphasize chemistry R&D, Verkor's differentiator is execution at scale. Its gigafactory in Dunkirk, which began commissioning in late 2025, is designed to reach 16 GWh of annual capacity—enough to power roughly 300,000 electric vehicles. The facility is among the most advanced battery plants in Europe, built to supply automotive OEMs with locally produced, low-carbon cells. The year 2026 is Verkor's start-of-production milestone. Its cells are the core of the new Alpine A390 and other Renault Group EV programs, giving the company a high-profile anchor customer and a direct path to volume demand. Verkor positions itself around "low-carbon performance" by combining France's low-emission nuclear grid with a highly digitized Industry 4.0 production system that reduces scrap rates and energy intensity. The company argues that its batteries carry a materially smaller carbon footprint than cells manufactured in coal-heavy regions, which is increasingly important as automakers track embedded emissions across supply chains. Beyond production, Verkor is investing in future chemistry and process innovation. The Verkor Innovation Centre (VIC) in Grenoble is expanding its work on next-generation chemistries, including sodium-ion cells that reduce reliance on lithium and cobalt. This R&D focus strengthens supply-chain resilience and creates optionality for lower-cost, lower-risk storage solutions as electric mobility scales. Verkor's roadmap also includes tighter integration between materials sourcing, cell design, and recycling, positioning it to meet Europe's stringent regulatory requirements on battery sustainability and traceability. Verkor is backed by a mix of strategic and infrastructure capital. Macquarie Asset Management and Meridiam provide long-term project finance muscle, Renault Group anchors demand and industrial validation, EQT Ventures provides growth capital, and Sibanye-Stillwater supports raw material security. It was co-founded and supported early by EIT InnoEnergy and has strong operational ties to Schneider Electric, which helped design its digital factory systems. With support from the Macron administration and the European Investment Bank, Verkor has become a poster child for European industrial sovereignty. In 2026, it stands as proof that Europe can manufacture critical clean-tech hardware at global scale—and do it with a lower-carbon footprint.
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Voima Ventures
Voima Ventures was founded in 2019 in Helsinki by Inka Mero, a serial entrepreneur and investor, and specialises exclusively in science-based deep tech spin-outs from universities and research institutions across the Nordics and Baltics. The firm raised its third fund of €90 million in 2023, bringing total assets above €100 million, and invests €200,000–€3 million at the earliest stages in biotech, quantum, AI, energy, climate, and life sciences. Over 70% of its 51 portfolio companies originate directly from academic labs, including Solar Foods. Voima is one of the few female-founded and female-led VC funds in the Nordics.
