AI-powered water heater could banish cold showers and carbon pollution
Chances are you’ve been there: Your formerly hot shower suddenly turns cold, darkening your mood in the process. Maybe someone in your household took an extra shower or you did…
Why Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and other investors are scouring universities for founders
The humble garage is so steeped in Silicon Valley lore it’s almost cliché. Yet that’s exactly how Caleb Boyd and Kevin Bush started Molten Industries: in the garage of the…
Axle Energy’s sprint to decarbonize the grid lights up with $9M seed led by Accel
The challenge of integrating renewable energy sources into the grid is a fast-unfolding startup opportunity. U.K.-based Axle Energy jumped on the chance to accelerate grid decarbonization when the business was…
Applied Carbon’s farm robot turns plant waste into biochar to capture CO2
It’s incredibly easy to dump carbon into the atmosphere and accelerate climate change. It’s a lot harder to take it out. Startups are experimenting with massive industrial systems to draw…
Bill Gates-backed Type One Energy lands massive seed extension to commercialize fusion power
Ever since a government experiment proved in 2022 that fusion isn’t as far fetched as it once seemed, physicists, engineers, and investors have been growing increasingly bullish on the technology’s…
GM-backed Addionics aims to make lithium-ion batteries cheaper with wavy foil
In the lithium-ion battery world, the race to the bottom isn’t as ominous as it sounds. Battery manufacturers are under pressure from automakers to lower prices while maintaining or improving…
Tracking the EV battery factory construction boom across North America
The onshoring of battery manufacturing for EVs started as a trickle during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then it turned into a tsunami. In 2019, just two battery factories were operating in…
CrowdStrike chaos leads to grounded aircraft — and maybe an unusual weather effect
Air traffic for many airlines ground to a halt after a buggy update from CrowdStrike took down Windows computers around the world. At the time of publication, nearly 3,500 flights…
WHAM! Nuclear fusion experiment hits new record for magnet strength
A nuclear fusion experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has set a record for the strongest steady magnetic field confining a plasma, ushering in new hope that forthcoming demonstration reactors…
Fusion pioneer Commonwealth Fusion Systems is selling core magnet tech to the University of Wisconsin
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is shipping a pair of its specialized magnets to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch. The move comes years before CFS anticipates starting its…
NovoNutrients tweaks its bugs to turn CO2 into protein for people and pets
The easiest way for a person to eat carbon dioxide is by consuming vegetables. David Tze wants his startup’s protein to be a close second. Tze’s company, NovoNutrients, has been…
Spain’s exposure to climate change helps Madrid-based VC Seaya close €300M climate tech fund
According to a recent Dealroom report on the Spanish tech ecosystem, the combined enterprise value of Spanish startups surpassed €100 billion in 2023. In the latest confirmation of this upward trend, Madrid-based…
Google’s environmental report pointedly avoids AI’s actual energy cost
Google has issued its 2024 Environmental Report, a more than 80-page document describing all of the massive company’s efforts to apply tech to environmental issues and to mitigate its own…
As the AI boom gobbles up power, Phaidra is helping companies manage datacenter power more efficiently
Electricity demand is booming on account of AI. In a May 2024 report, Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers will use 8% of the U.S.’s total power supply by 2030, up from…
Cold shipping might be the next industry that batteries disrupt
Hannah Sieber knows just how transformative batteries can be. At her previous startup, EcoFlow, she used them to replace generators, whether for powering homes after a bad storm or RVs…
As battery startups fail, Sila snaps up $375M in new funding
Amid a fraught environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to finish construction of a U.S. factory that will scale its next-generation battery technology for customers like Mercedes-Benz…
Climate X’s founders mortgaged their house to stay afloat — now they’ve raised an $18M Series A
When it comes to building software for climate tech, you probably want to build something in the general vicinity of carbon accounting, given that the hottest software platforms in the…
Foray Bioscience is breaking down the barriers of bringing biomanufacturing to plants
Ashley Beckwith spent years of her academic and professional career focused on the intersection of biology, materials and manufacturing to build medical solutions more efficiently. When she realized the tech…
Kilimo helps farmers save water and get paid for it
When people think about the water they use, they tend to think about drinking water out of the tap or maybe their daily shower. But about 70% of the water…
Dandelion co-founder is back to help you electrify your home for less
In the nearly 20 years that James Quazi has been a climate tech founder and operator, he’s seen a lot. From solar to geothermal, energy audits to energy storage, he’s…
Aepnus wants to create a circular economy for key battery manufacturing materials
Earlier this year, BASF had to delay the opening of a battery materials plant in Finland when a court agreed with environmental groups that the company didn’t have a good…
Gorilla, a Belgian startup that helps energy providers crunch big data, raises $25M
Gorilla, a Belgian company that serves the energy sector with real-time data and analytics for pricing and forecasting, has raised €23 million ($25 million) in a Series B round led…
Civic Renewables is rolling up residential solar installers to improve quality and grow the market
For an industry that’s about 20 years old, residential solar is still pretty tumultuous. Some of that can be blamed on shifting regulations, like what happened in California last year…
After hits like Reddit and Scopley, Collaborative Fund easily raised a $125M fund to tackle climate, health and food
The folks at Collaborative Fund certainly like a challenge. They don’t specialize in venture capital’s favorite business model, SaaS, preferring instead to invest in sectors like climate, health and food.…
Novel battery manufacturer EnerVenue is raising $515M, per filing
EnerVenue, a startup that has developed an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for long-duration renewable energy storage, is raising $515 million in fresh equity, per an SEC filing seen by TechCrunch.…
How many Earths does your lifestyle require?
Climate change might be the most significant environmental disaster facing humanity, but it’s not the only one. In fact, humanity already faces five others out of a total of nine…
SiTration uses silicon wafers to reclaim critical minerals from mining waste
Brendan Smith didn’t intend to be in the critical minerals business. He initially thought his high-tech filters would be good at desalination. But it was hard to beat existing systems,…
Samara is accelerating the energy transition in Spain one solar panel at a time
Since the shock of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, solar energy has been having a moment in Europe. Electricity prices have been going up while the investment required to get…
‘Star Wars’ lasers and waterfalls of molten salt: How Xcimer plans to make fusion power happen
Conner Galloway and Alexander Valys have followed developments in nuclear fusion research since they were roommates at MIT some 20 years ago. For much of that time, it wasn’t the…
Mill’s redesigned food waste bin really is faster and quieter than before
When someone says a product is “new and improved,” it’s wise to take it with a grain of salt. But with Mill’s redesigned food waste bin, you can believe it.…