The 200+ Startups Manufacturing the Future of Climate Tech

Manufacturing is not new. It can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution where raw materials were converted into finished goods.

Fast forward to today and manufacturing technologies are enabling new advances, hyper scalability and significant cost reductions to produce materials, chemicals, infrastructure, food and more. 

A crucial step towards scaling Climate technologies, startups are pioneering new ways to decarbonize, dewaste and develop new ways to transition to a low-carbon economy.

Scroll on down to for a map of 120 Startups behind new manufacturing as well as the full list of 200+ innovators in the space.

First we caught up with Edward Shenderovich, Founder and CEO of Synonym, Marissa Beatty, Founder and CEO of Turnover Labs and Dennis Nobelius, CEO of Syre, who apart from all joining us at the HackSummit in New York are all frontrunners in new ways of manufacturing. 

Between them they share their unique approaches across infrastructure, textiles and chemicals and how they’re working with stakeholders to hit giga-scale growth.

Decarbonizing, Dewasting, Detoxifying

“The textile industry accounts for up to 10 percent of the global CO2e emissions, and less than 1 percent of the global textile fiber market comes from recycled textiles. Syre was founded to mark the start of the much needed great textile shift. By implementing true textile-to-textile recycling at global hyperscale, we want to drive the transition from a linear to a circular value chain by putting textile waste to use, over and over again. Our mission is to decarbonize and dewaste the textile industry, starting with the industry’s biggest fiber and emitter - polyester,” Dennis Nobelius, CEO of Syre tells us.

“Most products we use in our daily lives are either directly or indirectly derived from both petroleum and animals. Bioproducts represent the chance to leverage microbes as factories for the creation of better products. Synonym’s manufacturing process uses renewable biological inputs and harnesses the power of fermentation (i.e. leverages microorganisms to produce new products). The infrastructure we develop optimizes energy and water usage, as well as reusability and retrofit costs, so that the same infrastructure can be used with multiple types of inputs for the production of many types of outputs,” explains Edward Shenderovich, Founder and CEO of Synonym. 

“The idea of turning CO2 into useful chemicals is not a new one, but the way we set ourselves apart is by building technologies that we envision to slot directly into chemical facilities or petroleum refineries. Rather than building a brand new plant from scratch, we're trying to build enabling processes that take CO2 that's emitted from a manufacturing site and just turn it into the most basic thing that they can reuse and we're doing this at the very ground level of how we design our processes,” says Marissa Beatty, Founder and CEO of Turnover Labs

Overcoming Challenges to Scale

Marissa tells us “Within electrolysis, durability is a major problem that prevents startups in our industry from scaling. We're trying to address challenges in longevity so that we can operate in harsh conditions. Durability has prevented electrolysis from scaling rapidly so we're trying to open up the areas where we can operate so that we can scale.”

Edward adds that “Putting steel in the ground is costly and requires developers to have a strong balance sheet, credible off-take partners, and the engineering and project delivery know-how. Infrastructure finance investors are notoriously conservative and aim to mitigate risks wherever possible. Synonym believes that ownership and usage in biomanufacturing infrastructure should be separated, in the same way they have been in more mature asset classes, such as data centers, wind and solar farms, and even in chip production, and delivers productized solutions to bring bioproducts to consumers faster and at a lower cost.”

Dennis points out “The challenge for the industry so far has not been innovation, but solutions that can drive hyperscale, at speed. Syre is built upon a financial model, investors, and playbook to scale rapidly. We are utilizing the combined strengths of our founders - Vargas Holding, with a proven track-record of building green impact companies, such as Northvolt, H2 Green Steel and Aira, and H&M Group. Building a strong team of global scalemakers, we plan to have our blueprint recycling plant up and running by the end of this year. By 2027, we aspire to have three plants up and running at full speed and capacity worldwide and by 2032, 12 plants producing more than 3 million metric tons of circular polyester and hence 15+ million metric tons CO2e abated.”

Unlocking New Collaborations

Dennis notes “Key to succeeding with our mission will for sure be to drive successful partnerships across the full textile value chain. We are establishing partnerships with brands, producers, and suppliers of polyester textiles in different sectors; apparel, automotive, interior, etc who have leading circularity ambitions and understand that circular materials will soon be a scarcity. The textile industry is now at a tipping point as the European Union and other actors are introducing legislation, e.g. EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, that will truly accelerate demand for circular materials. We believe that the regulatory package that the EU is putting in place is a game changer and will be instrumental for textile-to-textile recycling.” 

Edward shares “An ecosystem around biomanufacturing can not be built in a vacuum. iPROOF, our first project, is essentially an exercise in collaboration: we are a part of iFAB, an EDA-designated TechHub, which received $51M in federal government funding to boost biomanufacturing capabilities in Central Illinois. The initiative itself was spearheaded by IBRL, a fermentation pilot facility at UIUC, supported by both state and local governments, and run in partnership with both commercial and non-profit organizations across the state. We are extremely proud to be a part of this initiative and believe that these kinds of collaborations will be important catalysts for the bioeconomy.”

In addition to working with new partners Marissa concludes that they “have strategic investors that come from the chemicals manufacturing space, from the petrochemical refinery space, so that they can help guide us through, and make sure that we're on the right track to build something that's of value for our customers.”

120 Manufacturing Startups to Watch

Across 11 verticals, we handpicked 120 rising stars and moonshot scale ups who are making the future of manufacturing a reality.

Discover 200 Manufacturing Startups in ClimateTech

Find the full list of 200+ startups enabling the future of manufacturing:

Is your startup missing from the list? Head this way to add them

🚢 Explore The Future of Manufacturing at the HackSummit in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard

The host of our inaugural US HackSummit is where else than Newlab in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, a one-of-a-kind deeptech ecosystem housed in a venue dating back to the early 1800s.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard has played a pivotal role in shaping American history, from its origins as a naval shipyard that at its peak saw 75,000 workers on site to its transformation today into a dynamic industrial park home to 500+ businesses including some of the cities brightest builders and inventors.

We can’t imagine a better setting to discuss the coming of the next industrial revolution in a space so steeped in manufacturing history.

Early Bird Tickets to the inaugural HackSummit in New York (12-13th December) are now on sale.

Come and meet with industry titans and disruptors working on novel climate tech solutions for two day’s of networking and deal making across all things climate deep tech.

Ready to discover more? Head this way to see who’s speaking and what’s on the agenda.

P.S. Code FUTURE20 gets you 20% off your pass.