Climate

Activate and The Engine Accelerator team up to train scientists to become founders 

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The road from scientist to founder is well trodden, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Those pitfalls are why, over the last decade, several programs have sprung up to help smooth the path for technical founders. Now, two prominent programs, Activate and The Engine Accelerator, have decided they can give founders an even bigger advantage […]

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SolarSquare raises $40 million in India’s largest solar venture round

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SolarSquare has raised $40 million in what is the largest venture round in India’s solar sector. The Mumbai-based startup bootstrapped and was profitable selling to corporate customers for five years before switching to residential solar in 2021. Now it has scaled to powering over 20,000 homes and 200 housing societies across India, and is India’s

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A new wave of desalination startups argues that deeper is better

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It’s a cruel reality that only about 3% of the world’s water is fresh, and of that, only a fraction is readily available. Yet as the world’s arid regions encounter intensifying droughts, more people are eyeing the other 97% that’s sloshing around in the oceans. Islands, cities, and water districts have been using desalination to

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Planet A Foods nabs $30M to make tons more cocoa-free chocolate

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Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B foodtech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production capacity by around 7.5x. The round fast follows a

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FireDome’s autonomous launcher is gunning to protect acres of land from wildfire

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Fighting wildfire is a lot like waging war. There are foot soldiers and paratrooper-like smokejumpers, air support from airtankers, and mobile centers that can direct firefighter movements in the field. “It’s a battlefield,” Gadi Benjamini, co-founder and CEO of FireDome, told TechCrunch. “It changes, it’s dynamic, it’s unexpected.” But what firefighters have been missing is

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GM offloads one of its battery factories to joint venture partner LGES

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General Motors is selling its stake in the nearly completed Ultium Cells battery cell plant in Lansing, Michigan to its joint venture partner LG Energy Solution. GM’s step back from the factory comes amid weakening electric vehicle demand and the potential rollback of Biden administration incentives to produce clean energy domestically.  GM and LGES initially

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Climate VCs are cautiously optimistic about a second Trump term — here’s why

Climate /

President-elect Donald Trump made no secret during his campaigning that he doesn’t think the U.S. should take an aggressive stance on climate change. From leading chants of “drill, baby, drill” to frequently criticizing everything from wind turbines to electric vehicles, he appears poised to cast a shadow over the climate tech sector for the next

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From pond scum to premium skincare? Deep Blue Biotech is all in on blue-green algae to make better chemicals

Climate /

Decarbonizing our economies in the race to fight climate change demands a wholesale overhauling of all sorts of production processes to make them as sustainable as possible. Greening chemicals, which are used as ingredients in all sorts of products, is where U.K. startup Deep Blue Biotech is putting its energies. The biotech startup founded in

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Cambridge materials science spin-out Molyon is on a mission to make next-gen batteries fly

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Battery tech is pivotal as the world leans into electrification to power decarbonization in the race against climate change. But rising demand is putting more attention on the limits and drawbacks of current generation lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technology. This is where Cambridge University spin-out Molyon hopes to come in: the U.K. startup is developing next-gen

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