GreenTech

A brown macroalgae native to the Atlantic’s Sargasso Sea is increasingly a menace to coastal ecosystems and communities across the Gulf of Mexico, ever since mats of the normally beneficial seaweed (known as sargassum) exploded in numbers in 2011. This is the backdrop for Carbonwave, which recently raised $5 million to put the hulking algae

The funding landscape remains very tough for technology startups, but there are still some pockets, and specific companies, driving a lot of interest right now among investors because they look like they’ll break through whatever current macroeconomic trends that are gripping the world. Today, a startup out of Munich called IntegrityNext announced that it has

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Ben Lamm, the founder and CEO of Colossal, a genetics startup that looks to bring extinct species back to life to help with environmental conservation efforts. Ben talked about how he got to this point

Swedish company Candela will launch its 30-passenger commercial hydrofoil shuttle, the P-12, this summer — the vessel it believes will change the course of motorized water transport. Following on from its C-7 and C-8 leisure cruisers, Candela has already been making waves with its drive to transition to fossil-free waterways. “We are now heavy into

The startup claims it’s on the cusp of a superconductor breakthrough despite questionable scientific record Tim De Chant 1 day Ever since they were discovered over 100 years ago, superconductors have seemed a bit magical. You might have seen one on YouTube, levitating above a pool of liquid nitrogen, shrouded in vapor as the super-chilled

Elemental Excelerator, a nonprofit investor in climate-tech startups including BlocPower and ChargerHelp, says it’s “doubling down” in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank‘s collapse. Elemental intends to pump $43 million more into climate-tech startups — $13 million of which will be set aside for its twelfth accelerator program, beginning in October. The investor hasn’t secured all of

Green Li-ion says its battery recycling machines are the “size of a small house,” so it’s no wonder the Singapore-based startup needed to top up on funds. It’d only raised about $15 million ahead of its latest cash infusion. This week, Green Li-ion announced a $20.5 million “pre-Series B” round led by climate-tech investor TRIREC.

The World Economic Forum says that so-called ‘Scope 3 emissions,’ – or CO2 in supply chains  – can make up as much as 90% of a company’s carbon footprint and worldwide more than half of all emissions can be traced back to only a handful of supply chains. Tracking and reducing these emissions are easier

Tesla is opening up Powerwall home battery sales, nearly two years after limiting them because its supply was “too low.” Tesla announced its backup battery tech long ago, in 2015, explicitly intending for the product to work in tandem with solar panels. Yet up until 2021, the automaker also allowed folks to buy the big

Diamonds: carbon, transparent, expensive, symbolic of love and commitment — and many of them come dripping with human rights abuses. They also come with a heavy environmental burden, even the lab-grown ones. So what if diamonds could be done differently, with proper traceability and sustainability? That’s exactly where Aether, a diamond-growing company based in New

Like all of its peers in the tech industry, Microsoft has a carbon pollution problem. The software giant’s emissions are on the rise, in spite of a pledge from the company to be carbon negative by 2030. This ticking clock explains Microsoft’s latest deal to address its environmental toll: It’s turning to Running Tide to

Local governments in the southwestern U.S. are putting up $150,000 to back what they say is a pioneering effort to “turn air into concrete at scale.” The funds will help cover the cost of the “reference project,” a collaboration between two climate tech startups and a masonry firm in Flagstaff, Arizona. The firms expect construction

When it comes to sustainable infrastructure development, technology is making terrific leaps and bounds. The money to make it happen, however? That leaves a thing or two to be desired. For one thing, the processes remain largely manual, with financing in this sector remaining reliant on emails, spreadsheets and documents in a variety of formats.

Last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which protects consumers from deceptive business practices, issued an advisory titled “Keep your AI claims in check.” When it comes to marketing, “false or unsubstantiated claims about a product’s efficacy are our bread and butter,” wrote Michael Atleson, an attorney with the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices. Artificial

Honda bailed on the Clarity — its only hydrogen-powered car in the U.S. — but the automaker hasn’t quit on fuel cells. That’s the message Honda sent with a peculiar announcement today: It’s putting some old Clarity fuel cells back to work, combining them into a backup power system for its data center just south

For all the focus on carbon pollution produced by shipping and aviation, some of the most challenging to abate will probably be residential buildings. In the U.S., housing units stand an average of 130 years before they’re torn down, according to a recent study. Homes and apartment buildings built 100 years ago, or even 30

Climate change is a problem important and pressing enough that investors have begun to grasp the opportunities that arise when trying to solve it. Now, they’ve started to cast their nets wider for other, adjacent opportunities. Tech that serves to conserve the oceans while using it to replace older, more harmful means of generating energy

As a Universal Hydrogen-branded plane, equipped with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to power an aircraft, made its maiden test flight in eastern Washington, co-founder and CEO Paul Eremenko declared the moment the dawn of a “new golden age of aviation.” The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but it

The big, giant message Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other execs tried to impart during its four-hour Tesla Investor Day was how the company would be the driver of a global shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Investors, at least those active after the market closed, weren’t impressed perhaps because it lacked that

Every year, about 35% of the food supply in the U.S. is wasted. About half of that’s because of picky eaters or outsize restaurant portions, but the rest happens further upstream, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with about 6% to 13% occurring at grocery stores. For grocery stores, which operate on very thin

Air Company, a startup that turns carbon dioxide into things like perfume, vodka, hand sanitizer and aviation fuel, is now on the U.S. Defense Department’s payroll, so to speak. The JetBlue and Toyota-backed company struck an up-to $65 million deal to help the Air Force capture CO2 and turn it into “sustainable” aviation fuel on

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funga claims to be the first company to leverage nature’s power of carbon removal, by focusing on restoring belowground fungal biodiversity. 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

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