Climate tech is moving fast, and the opportunity is bigger than ever for founders building real solutions. In this list, we’re spotlighting climate tech startups to watch in 2026. These companies are drawing serious interest from investors and customers while working on industrial decarbonization, clean energy, carbon removal, climate intelligence, and electrification.
Innovative Climate Tech Startups
Every year, new startups rise to the top through exciting innovation and industry-disrupting business models. We’ve rounded up the best climate tech startups of 2026 that startup lovers, investors, and aspiring entrepreneurs should follow.
Disclaimer: With so many exciting startups launching and growing worldwide, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups that are listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.
1. ZeroAvia
- Location: Everett, Washington
- Founders: Val Miftakhov
- Founded In: 2018
- Total Funding: $298 Million
- Latest Round: Series D, $150 Million
- Investors Include: Barclays Climate Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures
Hydrogen flight is one of the few credible paths to cutting aviation emissions without asking the world to fly less, and ZeroAvia is aiming straight at that gap. The company is developing hydrogen-electric powertrains for regional aircraft with a focus on replacing conventional engines on shorter routes first. If hydrogen propulsion becomes commercially viable at scale, aviation could finally have a decarbonization option that isn’t limited to incremental efficiency gains.
2. Watershed
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Founders: Taylor Francis, Avi Itskovich, Christian Anderson
- Founded In: 2019
- Total Funding: $225 Million
- Latest Round: Series C, $14.5 Million
- Investors Include: Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks
Watershed is built for companies that need emissions data they can actually use, not just report. It helps teams measure and verify carbon footprints, handle disclosure requirements, and translate targets into an operational plan instead of a slide deck. As climate reporting becomes more standardized and scrutinized, tools like this turn sustainability from a scattered internal effort into something finance, operations, and leadership can manage without constant confusion.
3. H2Pro
- Location: Caesarea, Israel
- Founders: Hen Dotan, Talmon Marco, Gideon Grader, Avner Rothschild
- Founded In: 2019
- Total Funding: $107 Million
- Latest Round: Series B, $75 Million
- Investors Include: Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Temasek, Horizons Ventures
Green hydrogen is still one of the biggest bets in clean energy, and H2Pro is focused on making it easier and more cost-effective to produce. The company’s E-TAC method is designed to improve efficiency and safety, which matters a lot if hydrogen is going to scale in heavy industry.
4. Climavision
- Location: Louisville, Kentucky
- Founders: Chris Goode, Colin Cookes
- Founded In: 2020
- Total Funding: $100 Million
- Latest Round: Series A, $100 Million
- Investors Include: The Rise Fund
Extreme weather is becoming harder to predict and more expensive to ignore. Climavision is building radar and satellite-based forecasting systems designed to improve both speed and accuracy, which matters for everything from emergency planning to shipping, utilities, and insurance. When forecasts get more precise, decisions get less reactive. That is where resilience starts to look like a competitive advantage, not just a public safety issue.
5. Brimstone
- Location: Oakland, California
- Founders: Cody Finke, Hugo Leandri
- Founded In: 2019
- Total Funding: $60.1 Million
- Latest Round: Series A, $55 Million
- Investors Include: Breakthrough Energy Ventures, DCVC
Cement is one of those climate problems that’s easy to underestimate until you realize how foundational it is to modern life — and how carbon-intensive it is to produce. Brimstone is developing a cleaner cement process designed to avoid the emissions baked into traditional manufacturing. The upside here isn’t niche: If low-carbon cement becomes cost-competitive and scalable, it can ripple through construction, infrastructure, and housing almost immediately.
6. Heirloom
- Location: Brisbane, California
- Founders: Shashank Samala, Noah McQueen, Zack Bloom
- Founded In: 2020
- Total Funding: $207.6 Million
- Latest Round: Series B, $150 Million
- Investors Include: Lowercarbon Capital, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, United Airlines Ventures
Direct air capture gets criticized for being expensive and energy-hungry, and that’s fair. Heirloom is trying to shift that equation with a mineral-based approach designed to lower energy costs and make the process more scalable over time. Carbon removal is still in an early development phase and full of trade-offs, but Heirloom stands out by focusing on the unglamorous part: making the economics less brutal.
7. Rondo Energy
- Location: Alameda, California
- Founders: John O’Donnell, Pete von Behrens
- Founded In: 2020
- Total Funding: $195 Million
- Latest Round: Series B, $5 Million
- Investors Include: Microsoft, Energy Impact Partners, Breakthrough Energy Ventures
A lot of climate tech attention goes to flashy breakthroughs, but industrial heat is a quieter emissions driver that’s hard to replace with “just electrify it” slogans. Rondo Energy tackles that by storing renewable electricity as high-temperature heat, then delivering it on demand through heat batteries. It’s a pragmatic pitch for heavy manufacturing: decarbonize without waiting for perfect transmission, perfect storage, or perfect timing.
8. Quaise Energy
- Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Founders: Carlos Araque, Matt Houde
- Founded In: 2018
- Total Funding: $103 Million
- Latest Round: Series A1, $21 Million
- Investors Include: Prelude Ventures, Safar Partners, Mitsubishi Corporation
Geothermal power has always had one big advantage: it can deliver reliable, around-the-clock electricity without the intermittency challenges of wind and solar. The limitation has been access. Quaise Energy is developing drilling technology designed to reach much deeper geothermal resources than conventional methods with the goal of making geothermal viable in far more locations. If the tech works as intended, it could turn geothermal from a “great in the right place” solution into a broader clean baseload option.
9. Chestnut Carbon
- Location: New York, New York
- Founders: Ben Dell
- Founded In: 2022
- Total Funding: $690 Million
- Latest Round: Series B, $90 Million
- Investors Include: Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Cloverlay, DBL Partners
A lot of forestry carbon credits have credibility issues: questionable baselines, shaky permanence, and/or land the developer doesn't control. Chestnut Carbon takes a different approach: it buys the land outright, plants native forests on marginal farmland across the southeastern United States, and verifies every credit to the Gold Standard. Long-term offtake deals with major corporate buyers suggest the model is earning trust where it counts.
10. SPAN
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Founders: Arch Rao
- Founded In: 2018
- Total Funding: $261 Million
- Latest Round: Series B2, $96.5 Million
- Investors Include: Wellington Management, Congruent Ventures, Capricorn Investment Group
As homes add electric vehicle (EV) chargers, solar panels, batteries, and heat pumps, the electrical panel starts to matter a lot more than most people realize. SPAN makes smart electrical panels that help homeowners monitor and control how power flows through the home, prioritizing loads and managing energy use more efficiently. It’s the kind of upgrade that doesn’t look flashy, but it can make electrification easier to live with and easier to scale.
11. Blue Frontier
- Location: Boca Raton, Florida
- Founders: Daniel Betts
- Founded In: 2018
- Total Funding: $47.7 Million
- Latest Round: Venture Round, $16.9 Million
- Investors Include: CRCM Ventures, Innovation Incubator
Air conditioning (AC) is one of the fastest-growing sources of energy demand worldwide, and conventional systems are inefficient and leak harmful refrigerants. Blue Frontier‘s technology uses a salt-based liquid desiccant to pull humidity from the air and then cools it through evaporation — dramatically cutting energy use compared to traditional AC. The desiccant also can be recharged overnight, turning the unit into a form of energy storage that eases strain on the grid during peak hours.
12. CarbonChain
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Founders: Adam Hearne, Roheet Shah
- Founded In: 2019
- Total Funding: $14.2 Million
- Latest Round: Series A, $10 Million
- Investors Include: Union Square Ventures, Voyager Ventures
A huge share of emissions doesn’t come from a company’s offices or direct operations. It comes from the materials it buys and moves — especially in commodities like steel, cement, mining, and shipping. CarbonChain helps companies measure and track carbon across these supply chains, turning difficult-to-verify emissions data into something teams can actually work with. For businesses trying to make net-zero commitments real, that visibility is often the missing link between ambition and action.
13. Charm Industrial
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Founders: Peter Reinhardt, Kelly Hering, Shaun Meehan, Kevin Meissner
- Founded In: 2018
- Total Funding: $125 Million
- Latest Round: Series B, $100 Million
- Investors Include: General Catalyst, Lowercarbon Capital
Some carbon removal solutions still live in the “maybe someday” category, but Charm Industrial is already operating with a model built around permanence. The company converts biomass into a carbon-rich liquid and injects it underground, locking carbon away instead of letting it cycle back into the atmosphere. For buyers who care about durable, auditable removal rather than short-term offsets, Charm Industrial’s approach makes permanence feel less theoretical and more like a product.
14. Terabase Energy
- Location: Berkeley, California
- Founders: Matt Campbell, Chris Baker, Amine Berrada, Dan Cohen, Pierre Gousseland, Thang Le
- Founded In: 2019
- Total Funding: $222 Million
- Latest Round: Series C, $130 Million
- Investors Include: SoftBank, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Fifth Wall
The world needs to build solar farms much faster than it currently does, and construction is often the bottleneck. Terabase Energy addresses this with Terafab, an automated field factory that uses robotics to install modules around the clock. The system has already been deployed commercially, and the company is scaling up to make utility-scale solar faster and cheaper to build.
Final Thoughts
Climate tech is not just one industry. It’s an ecosystem of startups solving emissions, energy, resilience, and sustainability issues at scale. The companies on this list show where momentum is heading in 2026: carbon removal moving toward real infrastructure, industrial decarbonization becoming urgent, and electrification scaling from niche to default. Whether you’re an investor, founder, or simply someone who loves startup culture, these are some of the most exciting climate tech startups to follow this year.