20 NatureTech Solutions Startups Should be Working on Next

Funding for NatureTech in 2025 has got off to a strong start.

As Colossal Biosciences, Inari, NatureMetrics, Fermata, Kilter and Cascadia Seaweed are just some of the nature startups making fundraising headlines.

Their technologies cover biodiversity monitoring, extinction, seaweed-based fertilisers and tools to edit plant DNA for resiliency. Will these technologies continue to receive investment in the months ahead, or will new trends take centre stage?

We caught up with 8 NatureTech Leaders across venture building, VC, not for profits and consultants to get a better idea of what lies for the future of NatureTech and biodiversity solutions.

These include:

🌳 Biodiversity Credits
🔢 Biodiversity Metrics
🧬 Synthetic Biology and AI
🌺 Nature-Inspired Replacements
🔥 Disaster Prevention and Prediction
♻️ A Circular Economy for Biodiversity
🌾 Regenerative Agriculture Technologies

If you’re fundraising and your startup is working on one or more of these solutions, then reach out to the investors to start discussions today or join us at the HackSummit to meet many of them IRL.

Before we jump in…

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20 NatureTech Solutions Startups Should be Working on Next

Gilad Goren at Nature Tech Collective

• Biodiversity Metrics: Investors and companies are increasingly realizing that simply counting trees planted doesn't tell us if we're actually helping nature thrive. Biodiversity is emerging as the ultimate measure of planetary health, with a shift toward more sophisticated biodiversity indicators that capture ecosystem complexity and resilience. This creates opportunities for startups developing innovative biodiversity assessment tools that can help organizations understand and improve their true environmental impact. 

• Nature Fintech: There's a $700B gap in annual nature funding, but traditional finance hasn't figured out how to close it. Solving this problem will require new financial instruments and marketplaces \ that properly value and incentivize biodiversity protection, from biodiversity credits to nature-linked bonds. This opens the door for fintech startups that can help companies and investors understand, price, and mitigate their biodiversity impacts. 

• Monitoring: The biodiversity data landscape is patchy and often outdated. The future of biodiversity monitoring lies in the integration of multiple data streams: there's an urgent need for reliable platforms that can piece together satellite imagery, field sensors, and boots-on-the-ground insights. Companies that can give us a clear, real-time picture of ecosystem health will unlock entirely new markets for biodiversity protection.

Camille Accolas at Brainforest

• Supply Chain Transparency at the Source: As regulations like the EU Deforestation-Free Products Regulation take effect, businesses are under increasing pressure to trace and disclose the environmental and social impacts of their supply chains. Solutions like Orijin are leading the way by providing granular, data-driven insights at the farm level. By starting at the root of supply chains, they enable companies to identify and mitigate risks such as deforestation and biodiversity loss while creating direct benefits for smallholder farmers through fairer practices and increased transparency. These technologies empower companies to comply with reporting requirements while building consumer trust, and we’d love to see more founders innovating in this critical space. 

• Scalable Reforestation Solutions: With wildfires, illegal deforestation, and climate-induced flooding causing devastating ecosystem loss, reforestation efforts need to be scalable, efficient, and grounded in ecological science. Ceres Seeding is a great example of how innovative techniques—such as aerial seeding and data-driven site selection—can restore degraded lands while enhancing biodiversity. By integrating localized species knowledge and advanced mapping tools, they’re demonstrating that reforestation isn’t just about planting trees but creating long-term, resilient ecosystems. There’s a clear need for more founders to develop scalable models for ecosystem restoration that address both the climate and biodiversity crises. 

• Empowering Communities Through Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs): NTFPs represent an underexplored opportunity to align biodiversity preservation with economic empowerment. Companies like Biotara and Nature Connect India are championing this approach by working directly with local communities to restore and protect forests while creating value from high-quality forest products like medicinal plants, wild honey, and natural fibers. These initiatives foster a deep connection between people and ecosystems, transforming communities into active stewards of nature. By creating economic incentives that depend on maintaining biodiversity, NTFPs provide a sustainable alternative to destructive land uses and help protect forest ecosystems in the long term. Founders exploring this space are proving that biodiversity conservation can be deeply rooted in economic and cultural resilience. 

Philipp Staudacher at Innovate 4 Nature

• Partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities: Startups are collaborating with indigenous peoples and local communities to co-create conservation strategies that leverage traditional ecological knowledge for sustainable resource management. This approach fosters environmental stewardship and aligns with growing corporate interest in ethical sourcing and nature-positive practices. 

• Regenerative Agriculture Technologies: Startups are advancing regenerative agricultural practices to enhance biodiversity, restore soil health, and reduce the environmental footprint of farming. Companies seeking to reduce their biodiversity impact increasingly turn to these technologies to support sustainable sourcing and supply chains. 

• Circular Economy for Biodiversity: A shift towards circular economic practices enables businesses to reduce waste and lessen their environmental impact. Companies adopt designs that prioritize resource efficiency and biodiversity protection. This approach supports a more sustainable economy while reducing habitat degradation and pollution. 

Manuella Cunha Brito at Mudcake

• Nature as the Next Frontier After Climate: As the world looks beyond GHG emissions. We will see more founders developing breakthrough innovations to (i) protect biodiversity and natural ecosystems, (ii) leverage natural assets to make industrial processes more efficient and sustainable. 

• Synthetic Biology and AI: These technologies will continue to progress and unlock exciting opportunities in nature tech – from more efficient enzymes and biomanufacturing reducing waste and protecting water streams, to stable peptides and RNA replacing toxic chemicals for nutritious soils and resilient lands, or platforms for biodiversity discovery and conservation, and beyond. 

• Policy and Regulation: More stringent regulations are expected, but nature tech startups cannot rely on policy incentives or the private sector's goodwill. Rather, they must build solutions that protect nature while reducing business risks, making value chains more resilient, and fundamentally being so much better and cheaper than alternatives that the transition is a no-brainer.

Susanne Fromm at Vanagon Ventures

• Awareness & Data: Biodiversity is following a similar path to climate action but lagging several years behind. Attention to biodiversity is now clearly on the rise. While many companies are still struggling with carbon accounting, regulations such as the CSRD and initiatives like the TNFD are moving biodiversity higher up the agenda. Companies—from corporates to insurers to banks—are increasingly understanding the relevance of biodiversity and are delving into this area, which is clearly more complex than carbon. Various B2B startups have been created around compliance & co. Various biodiversity pilots are being conducted. But there is still room for sophisticated approaches, e.g., tackling usability, corporate education, and new data plays. The question is just when, not whether, the inflection point of demand will be reached.

• Risk View: Biodiversity loss is a threat for various industries, not only obvious examples such as the agri-food and tourism. In the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, biodiversity loss can significantly impact the discovery of new drugs. Many life-saving medicines are derived from compounds found in plants, fungi, and marine organisms. According to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report, $44 trillion of economic value generation—over half the world’s total GDP—is directly dependent on nature. In the long run, our entire economy is at risk. Finally, also at the company level biodiversity is increasingly perceived as a risk for monetary losses, and thereby it becomes part of not only compliance and sustainability managers' agendas. Also risk managers, CFOs and CEOs are starting to pay attention. The demand for solutions, for example those expressing biodiversity risk in monetary terms, is emerging.

• From Co-Benefit to Essence: Novel ways of measuring and financing natural capital are arising, in which biodiversity takes center stage. Our portfolio company, The Landbanking Group, for instance, has developed an AI-based operating system for nature finance, which measures in real-time natural capital, including biodiversity, alongside water storage capacity, soil quality, and sequestered carbon. Based on this natural capital, contracts between land stewards and investors for regenerative land-use practices can be concluded. For example, numerous agri-food companies have already used the platform together with the farmers in their supply chain. The resulting „nature uplift“ can be put on the companies’ balance sheets as an investment in the future ability to do business. Furthermore, it can be traded—analogous to a carbon credit, but much more holistic (carbon is just one aspect of several) and proven. The nature uplift has already happened and has been documented, as opposed to the ex-ante promises of most carbon projects, where biodiversity is at most addressed as an unquantified „co-benefit“, if at all.

Olivia Brooks at Founders Factory

• Nature-Inspired Replacements: Using nature based inputs for industrial needs e.g. seaweed for material manufacturing such as how Soarce uses bio refined seaweed for materials with specialist properties or how Seastock uses asparagopsis for agricultural and pharmaceutical needs. Another approach is using nature inspired engineered enzymes/ bacteria for uses such as contaminated soil clean up or enhanced metal recovery e.g. Endolith & Bluumbio. 

• Technology to Reduce Biodiversity and Industry Clashes: Better technologies to protect animals from industrial activities e.g. Whaleseeker helping marine mammals avoid clashes with ships or Spoor AI helping reduce collisions of birds with wind farms. 

• Disaster Prevention and Prediction: Technologies to help predict or prevent disasters like wildfires through advanced imagery/ data collection or using nature based technologies for reducing impacts of events like flooding.

Eric Gossart at Serena

• Solving the Data Equation: Data is king, yet nature has long been the overlooked beneficiary of these technological advancements. Integrating advanced technologies into biodiversity MRV is transforming how we monitor environmental impact. Real-time data collection through IOT sensors and satellite imagery, coupled with ai-driven analysis, predictive modeling, and automated species and habitat assessments, enables precise tracking of ecological changes. This approach not only drives accountability but also equips organizations to make informed, sustainable decisions that align with global conservation goals. MRV remains a key trend for 2025. 

• Solving the Financing Equation: The NatureTech industry is driving large-scale financing of nature-based solutions (NBS) and the trading of high-integrity carbon and biodiversity credits enabled through AI and marketplaces. These new segments of innovation will ensure transparency, scalability, and measurable impact. By aligning economic incentives with environmental preservation, new investment opportunities will be unlocked while fostering credible and sustainable pathways for a nature-positive future. Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement is a first credible step to drive changes.

• Healing Soil: in 2025, regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, sustainable blue economy, and advanced water management will become cornerstone practices. Enhancing soil health, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration, while addressing critical challenges such as food security, water scarcity, and climate change, will come to the fore, supported by market incentives and policy frameworks.

Mike Kelly at BiodiversityStartups.com

• Market-Shaping Initiatives: In the form of Advance Market Commitments such as those from Symbiosis, Milkywire and Frontier Climate. These programmes have huge potential to provide an initial source of revenue to biodiversity startups. 

• Biodiversity Credits: Although they are currently highly controversial (greenwashing concerns) and complicated to implement, I still see them as having enormous potential for scaling this industry. It is interesting to follow the current growth path of them in the UK under the "biodiversity net gain" requirements.

• Customer Discovery engagements with Corporates: An increasing number of companies and government bodies are willing to speak with biodiversity-tech startups at very early stages of development, even before prototypes of "Minimum Viable Products" have been built. This early feedback is critical if viable biodiversity-tech companies are to scale.