GreenTech

For an ecosystem that covers a majority of the planet, the oceans have basically been ignored by startups and investors alike. Sure, plenty of money is spent on ocean-based industries, but most of today’s marine investments are into either extractive industries like fishing or oil and gas, or activities like shipping, which aren’t extractive but

Based in the Netherlands, blossoming agtech startup Source.ag has announced a $23 million Series A funding round to help grow its business, less than a year after its previous, $10 million round. The company assists commercial greenhouse crop growers adjust their growing conditions, optimize their resources and maximize their yields by using state-of-the-art AI models

As pressure grows on companies to reduce reliance on gas and oil, established processes even at industrial scales are being questioned, offering an opportunity for tech to step in. SepPure is looking to replace the complex gas-based distillation of oils with a membrane engineered at the nanometer scale, and its approach has attracted $12 million

The current battery boom might feel familiar to those who lived through the clean tech bubble that burst a decade ago, with an awful lot of money being invested in what are still nascent markets. But certainly they’re bigger this time around: The number of electric vehicles on the road has more than doubled in

“That doesn’t look safe.” The statement would follow me for days. Every time I mentioned I was test driving Arcimoto’s Fun Utility Vehicle — an open-air, all-electric three-wheeler — a friend or co-worker would pipe up to state, what to them, seemed like the obvious. After all, most cars have four wheels, not three. They

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Alex Rappaport, the CEO and co-founder of ZwitterCo, a startup that develops technology that filters waste water. Alex talked about how his childhood on the Potomac River inspired his future career in clean water. He

Funga claims to be the first nature-based carbon removal to be powered by belowground biodiversity restoration. The company just raised a $4 million round. The company was founded by ecologist and climate scientist Dr. Colin Averill, and it combines modern DNA sequencing and machine learning technology with breakthrough research on the forest microbiome. This approach

Around 39,000 people were killed in motor vehicle incidents in the USA in 2020 — and 6,200 of those deaths were pedestrians. Needless to say, those deaths aren’t just statistics: each has a ripple effect on families, loved ones and the wider communities. Viva is looking to tackle transportation impacts after raising $8.5 million in

No matter how you slice it, buildings are serious climate change drivers. Every component of the so-called built environment — from off-site materials production and construction to electricity and maintenance — comes at a steep environmental cost. The sector is responsible for nearly 40% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the International Energy

After a decade of keeping its North American charging network closed to outsiders, Tesla appears poised to allow other electric vehicles to use its Superchargers. The White House announced on Wednesday that the company would open 7,500 chargers — including 3,500 250 kW stalls along highways — to any EV with the combined charging system

Elon Musk’s plan to “operate as a giant distributed utility” is creeping toward reality. Tesla first piloted a “virtual power plant” in California, inviting Powerwall home battery owners to sell electricity back to the grid at peak times to mitigate brownouts. Soon after, the automaker expanded the effort into Australia and Japan, and next it’s

Toyota president Akio Toyoda has made it no secret that he really, really dislikes electric vehicles. This weekend, he offered this latest installment: “People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority,” Toyoda told reporters in Thailand, according to The Wall Street Journal. “That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK

Solid Power, one of the leaders in the race to commercialize all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries, has been stumbling of late. But a new deal with BMW might give it the boost it needs. After going public via SPAC in late 2021, Solid Power’s share price followed the all-too-familiar SPAC bump then bust, trading for much of

With 2022 in retreat, investors have made no secret that they’re looking for safe investments. In a challenging market with higher interest rates, that’s no surprise, but what might raise eyebrows is where investors think those quality investments lie. Increasingly, it’s in climate tech. The sector had a crazy 2021, and while 2022 may not

In case anyone asks, 2022 was all about energy — natural gas, oil, renewables, all of it. Natural gas prices surged early as Vladimir Putin’s poorly thought-out decision to invade Ukraine slashed gas deliveries to Europe. That, coupled with high oil prices, substantially contributed to near-record-setting inflation that forced central bankers to raise interest rates.

Aerones, a robotics startup that scrubs and inspects wind turbines so humans don’t have to, secured $38.9 million in fresh funding this month from dozens of undisclosed investors, TechCrunch has learned. Wind turbines produce clean energy, but their towers tend to leak oil, which can corrode blades, increase wind resistance and pollute the ground below.

Climate became an increasingly popular topic in 2021, perhaps best showcased in pieces like this interview with Eric Dean Wilson on why air conditioning, one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, is killing the 21st, which we featured in our Best of TechCrunch 2021 list. But this year came in waves — heat

When you think of the biggest tech stories of the year, you probably think of something like Elon Musk buying Twitter, former crypto wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX filing for bankruptcy, all the people who lost their life savings when UST imploded or the tens of thousands of tech workers who got laid off. It was

The conversation around widespread electric vehicle adoption has been inherently linked with charging: Are the chargers plentiful? Will they charge my car fast enough? Are they plugged into a grid that’s not entirely run by coal? Billions of dollars have gone into developing batteries that can handle fast charges as well as chargers that can

In horse racing, the most reliable tips about which horse will likely win often come from the stable boys, since they’re the ones closest to the source. So when we thought about the best ways to find out what’s happening in a particular sector, we figured why not get it straight from the horse’s mouth

As rumors rumbled that the U.S. Federal Reserve would hike rates once more — and when it followed through earlier this week — another round of layoffs hit the tech sector. Stripe, Opendoor, Chime, Zillow, Cerebral, Brex, and of course Twitter, among others, have already cut or are about to eliminate thousands of jobs. That’s

A lot of problems worth solving aren’t ones that you can solve in a year or two or even 10. For founders and investors alike, such long timelines can seem daunting. But for Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of battery tech startup Sila, hard tech problems are also some of the most tantalizing. “It’s always

A lot of things might spring to mind when you hear “fashion,” but taking care of the planet generally isn’t on that list. Smartex just raised a couple of bolts’ worth of cash, sowing up a round of funding to bring smart tech to fabric manufacturing. The hope is to be able to detect textile

Kicking things off with a big funding round for AMP Robotics this week for a couple of reasons, but when push comes to shove, it comes down to something really simple: There are a lot of great reasons to be bullish on automation and there are a lot of equally great reasons to be bullish

Bruvi‘s B-pods take a novel approach that (probably correctly) assumes consumers are too lazy to return their aluminium pods to the manufacturer (looking at you, Nespresso), and too clumsy to do the pre-processing needed to properly dispose of other pods. So the company instead assumes that the pods go to a landfill, and designed them

Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon is doubling down on a startup that is racing to bring solar modules to rooftops in India. SolarSquare said on Thursday it has raised $13 million in a Series A funding round led by Lowercarbon and Elevation Capital, just months after securing its seed financing. Existing backers Good Capital, Rainmatter, Better Capital

At an AI-focused press event today in New York, Google announced that it’s bringing its AI-powered wildfire detection system to the U.S. Canada, Mexico and parts of Australia. It’s one of several “AI for good” efforts the company detailed this morning, which also included Google’s efforts to expand flood forecasting to more regions around the

A prolific investor in climate-tech companies in Canada is back with a second fund for “low-carbon technologies” — only this time the firm plans to pump less money into the scene, over a longer period of time. The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) came out with a new, $400 million climate-tech fund on Wednesday,

Samsara Eco, an Australian startup that uses enzyme-based technology to break down plastic into its core molecules, announced today it has raised $54 million AUD (about $34.7 million USD) in Series A funding. The company is planning to build its first plastic recycling facility in Melbourne later this year, with the target of full-scale production

Indonesia wants to direct the blockchain craze toward greener use. The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Metaverse Green Exchange (MVGX), a Singaporean startup that specializes in digital exchange technology. The intended collaboration centers around IDX’s emission trading scheme that is slated to launch in 2025, and MVGX’s job is