Issue #63
This issue features curbside EV charging, cultivated fat, mycelium textiles, recycling permanent magnets, new photovoltaic solutions, colorants grown by microorganisms, and harvesting waste heat!
Welcome back! The ClimateRaise newsletter showcases actively-raising, early-stage climate startups led by founders from historically marginalized backgrounds. We connect them with investors and climate ecosystem partners through warm introductions.
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This month, we’re featuring seven companies:
it’s electric - curbside EV charging for cities
Genuine Taste - improving alternative meats with cultivated fat
MycoFutures - leading mycelium textile innovation
NeoCtech - recycling permanent magnets to produce rare earth metals
Solaires - innovating photovoltaic solutions for a cleaner world
Lite-1 Bio - creating new colorants grown by microorganisms
Harvest Systems - harvesting and recycling waste heat
Featured companies
it’s electric
Curbside EV charging for cities
it’s electric is the world’s first public charging system powered by buildings. The Company uses existing residential and commercial infrastructure to power its chargers while allowing property owners to earn passive income. It is also the first American company to offer a detachable cable, ensuring uptime, interoperability, and keeping streets free of cables when a car is not charging.
it's electric plans to deploy across six American cities in 2024. After closing a 2.2M pre-seed round in 2023, it's electric was selected for the White House EV Acceleration Challenge and named The Next Big Thing In Tech. In the same year, the team won the SXSW Innovation Award, the Fast Company Innovation By Design Award for Sustainability, and the City Solution of the Year (Earthshot Prize). In 2024, the Company was named a "Top Innovator" by the World Economic Forum and was awarded a $1.5M Federal grant from the Joint Office for the creation of a national curbside charging toolkit.
Co-Founder & COO: Tiya Gordon
Co-Founder & CEO: Nathan King
HQ: Brooklyn, NY
Current funding stage: Seed
Genuine Taste
Improving alternative meats with cultivated fat
Genuine Taste supplies alternative meat companies with customizable fat, which can improve the taste, texture, and nutrition of both unstructured (i.e. plant-based burgers) and structured products (i.e. whole cuts of meat). A few stem cells are isolated from an animal usually through a small biopsy under anesthesia and then grown at a mass scale in bioreactors in the lab.
The Company has previously received funding from Big Idea Ventures and has secured a paid pilot with a global ingredient company. The team is currently producing tens of grams of cultivated fat per batch in the lab and looking to scale by designing a custom bioreactor system.
Co-Founder: Emily Faraar
Co-Founder: Pooya Mamaghani
HQ: Montreal, Quebec
Current funding stage: Seed
Asks: Genuine Taste is interested in meeting potential partners such as cultivated meat and plant-based meat companies for pilot projects and joint development.
MycoFutures
Leading mycelium textile innovation
MycoFutures is using mycelium, the root system of fungi, to create a new, plastic-free, toxin-free, and sustainable material for the fashion industry and beyond. The Company is combining regenerative principles with vertical farming efficiency to create a leather alternative.
MycoFutures recently graduated from the Mass Challenge Switzerland accelerator and has signed six letters of intent from a group of brands and designers from around the world. Through the next year, the Company will receive material testing results, solidify its IP strategy, and execute a room-scale pilot project.
Co-Founder & CEO: Stephanie Lipp
HQ: Toronto, Ontario
Current funding stage: Pre-seed
Asks: MycoFutures is looking for investors, pilot customers, and strategic partners.
NeoCtech
Recycling permanent magnets to produce rare earth metals
NeoCtech offers a clean, domestic, and affordable solution to produce high-quality rare earth metals (e.g. Nd, Dy, Pr) by recycling permanent magnets. The Company is interested in licensing its technology to other companies or offering metal products as raw materials to manufacturers of electronics, renewable energy, and electric vehicles.
NeoCtech has secured its first sale, initiating revenue generation by strategic pre-selling of the rare earth oxides product. NeoCtech recently received a $360K grant from PRIMA Quebec for the pilot plant design and a $900K grant from Next Generation Manufacturing Canada. The Company is completing its pilot recycling plant design which will process a capacity of 10 kg per day of magnets.
Co-Founder & CEO: Samira Aghaee Sarbarze
Co-Founder & CTO: Mohammad Latifi
HQ: Quebec, Quebec
Current funding stage: Seed
Ask: NeoCtech is interested in partnering with suppliers of permanent magnets to secure feed for the process.
Solaires
Innovating photovoltaic solutions for a cleaner world
Solaires is developing perovskite materials that will be the next generation of solar technology. The Company’s new, light, and thin photovoltaic modules can generate electricity from both indoor incandescent light and sunlight, opening up new use cases for photovoltaics, including IoT and flexible devices.
Solaires has sent its ink prototype to over 22 customers around the world for testing, which has shown the stability of the inks. Solaires currently has received four Letters of Intent worth $10.5M.
Co-Founder & CSO: Sahar Sam
HQ: Victoria, British Columbia
Current funding stage: Seed
Lite-1 Bio
Creating a new generation of colorants grown by microorganisms
Lite-1 is transforming the toxic global color industry by creating a new generation of colorants grown by microorganisms in a sustainable, circular, and non-toxic process. The Company’s beachhead targets early strategic clothing manufacturers with an existing budget for sustainable solutions.
Lite-1 has developed a proprietary, patented, biotech platform that allows the customization of sustainable colorants for the needs of the end industry user. Lite-1’s technology reduces water pollution, is safe for workers and ecosystems, and eliminates dependence on nonrenewable resources.
Co-Founder & CEO: Roya Aghighi
Co-Founder & CINO: Sarah Graham
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia
Current funding stage: Seed
Asks: Lite-1 is looking for scaled fermentation facilities near major dye houses and strategic customer introductions to run early trials.
Harvest Systems
Harvesting and recycling waste heat
Harvest System’s technology harvests and recycles waste heat to reduce operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions in a cost-effective and scalable way. Currently, the company is focused on the $3B restaurant industry, where the platform acts as a drop-in replacement for traditional water heaters. Using an attachable heat reclaimer, waste heat is captured directly from commercial cooking appliances (such as ovens and fryers) and stored in a hot water tank without compromising safety and performance, resulting in two-year payback on average.
The technology was born out of a $1.7M research collaboration between McMaster University, Pizza Pizza Limited, and Thermal Electronics Corporation. Following successful pilots with Pizza Pizza, Harvest Systems is ready to commercialize the pizza oven and build out its full suite of products.
Co-Founder & CFO: Kasia Malz
Co-Founder & CEO: Jim Cotton
HQ: Hamilton, Canada
ICYMI - They are still raising
Aruna Revolution Health - manufacturer of compostable menstrual pads
Ayrton Energy - hydrogen storage technology
Bug Mars - entomologist-as-a-service platform top optimize insect farming
friendlier - reverse logistics tracking software for reusable packaging systems
Opalia - lab cultured milk manufacturer
Kai Pono Solutions - stormwater filtration systems
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Resources for founders
🔍 Opportunities
Are you looking for piloting space free of charge? Yard Labs’ piloting program offers access to a 300-acre testbed in New York City to climate tech and mobility companies with the goal of accelerating the commercialization of emerging technologies that improve the lives of city dwellers.
The Greenhouse is a collaborative innovation program centered around the conviction that women's voices, ideas, and approaches are critical to helping us address climate change, adapt, and thrive. The program will guide participants through key steps of the founder journey, supported by virtual innovation workshops, small group feedback and collaboration sessions, and interactive conversations with leading women in climate. The next cohort runs from May 6 - August 16, 2024. Please fill out this form by April 30 to apply.
The Dream Makers Founder Grant is a $1M grant fund that has been established by Nancy R. Twine to drive a dedicated effort to support female entrepreneurs, particularly Black and BIPOC founders in the consumer goods industry. In partnership with the Fifteen Percent Pledge, this grant aims to bridge the resource gap and help emerging businesses flourish, reach new audiences, and achieve their full potential. Applications close April 30th, apply here.
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📚 What we’re reading this week
Climate change could affect the measurement of time
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~Priya and the ClimateRaise Team
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