🛠️ 42 Startups Reinventing Industries

The future of industry is moving from climate labs to commercial reality.

It is not just about decarbonising, it is about re-engineering the systems we all rely on to upgrade the systems that power global industries.

To keep tabs on who are the startups to watch, we asked 13 active investors which startups are reimagining how we make, move, and power the world, and why their breakthroughs that could reset entire sectors.

Whether it is rethinking industrial heat, turning waste into resources, or unlocking nextgen materials, these founders are showing that the path to a low-carbon, abundant future runs through bold engineering and smarter infrastructure.

Scroll on to meet all 42 of them, and submit your vote for the ‘one that got away’.

42 Startups Reinventing Industries

Sean O'Sullivan at SOSV

Hoofprint Biome*

🇺🇸 North Carolina
Co-Founder and CEO: Kathryn Polkoff
Why: Cattle are responsible for about 30% of global methane emissions—one of the most powerful greenhouse gases. Hoofprint Biome uses enzymes to reshape the rumen microbiome, cutting methane production while boosting dairy milk yield and beef cattle weight gain. No harsh chemical feed additives. Only a natural solution.

Still Bright*

🇺🇸 New Jersey
Co-Founder and CEO: Randy Allen
Why: Still Bright is developing a novel, sustainable method to extract copper without the massive waste, pollution, and energy demands of conventional mining. Its electrochemical process recovers high-purity copper directly from low-grade ores and waste streams, turning what’s normally discarded into value, unlocking cleaner, more efficient, circular metal production.

Xias Bio*

🇬🇧 Glasgow
Managing Director: David Harvey
Why: Xias Bio has developed the world’s first molecular platform for creating multi-functional, animal-free proteins. Each one can do the work of three or more animal proteins. Targeting cosmetics (e.g., collagen, keratin, elastin), its tech reduces reliance on livestock, slashes GHGs, pollution, and deforestation, paving the way for sustainable bioeconomy transformation.

Laura Fox at Streetlife Ventures

🔥 Eztia Materials*

🇺🇸 San Francisco
CEO: Tiffany Yeh, Jack Wilson 
Why: 2024 was the hottest summer on record globally, and 2025 is on track to be on par. By 2030, extreme heat is expected to drive $2.1T in corporate asset loss annually (S&P), and extreme heat is already the leading cause of climate-related deaths (500K per year, with one-third in Europe). Eztia is a novel material science breakthrough that absorbs body heat and reduces skin temperature by ~10°C for 6-8 hours of strenuous physical activity, enhancing human performance, worker productivity, and protecting against heat-related injuries. Eztia’s technology can be used anywhere in the world, integrates into existing clothing and gear, and recharges with only water in under 30 minutes — no batteries, refrigeration, or electricity needed.

⚡️ Public Grid*

🇺🇸 New York
Co-Founder: Zach Schmitz, Joe Robbins
Why: More than a third of Americans feel burdened by energy costs, and 20% of renters have missed energy payments due to high costs — and renters on average pay 10% more for energy. Public Grid transforms how residents and multifamily properties interact with their electricity providers to reduce bills. Public Grid saves renters 10-30% on their utility bills while delivering clean energy through three business lines: energy brokering, low-cost delivery of community solar benefits, and virtual power plant programs (VPPs), which also help utilities optimize their grid infrastructure.

🔍 Silera

🇨🇦 Quebec
Co-Founder: Andrei Muresanu, Jerome Malevez 
Why: Computer vision is 10 years behind, and large language models (LLMs) have 3,000x more labeled data than vision models – delaying important innovations to built world systems to lower costs and decrease emissions and waste. Silera generated photoreal synthetic data to scale vision models, to solve critical pain points for circular economy, resilient infrastructure, zero-waste manufacturing, and climate-smart agriculture use cases.

Matthew Blain at Voyager Ventures

❄️ Barocal

🇬🇧 Cambridge
Founder: Xavier Moya 
Why: Barocal is building the holy grail in cooling. No refrigerant gasses, lower total cost of ownership and price parity with existing systems. 

⚡️ tem.

🇬🇧 London
CEO and Co-Founder: Joe McDonald 
Why: tem is cutting out the middle men in the wholesale energy markets to provide low cost power to C&I customers. 

❄️ Corintis 

🇨🇭 Lausanne
CEO and Co-Founder: Remco van Erp 
Why: Corintis is scaling breakthrough microfluidic cooling technology for high-power chips in data centres. 

Rachel Slaybaugh at DCVC

⚡️ Fervo Energy*

🇺🇸 Texas
CEO: Tim Latimer
Why: Clean, firm energy is incredibly important for grid reliability, clean air, and economic abundance. My whole career, geothermal was written of as a rounding-error power source that would never contribute meaningfully in most places. Fervo has torn down that assumption by making clean, firm geothermal energy viable and valuable in lots of locations. 

🔌 Mainspring*

🇺🇸 California
CEO and Founder: Shannon Miller
Why: flexible, behind the meter power is key for businesses functioning on today's grid and Mainspring offers a power generation asset that fits that need. Mainspring's linear generators are fuel flexible, so they can bridge to a clean fuel future as well as use all of the renewable natural gas available today. Importantly, they are modular and flexible and can be built and scaled today. 

🏭 Guidewheel

🇺🇸 California
Ceo and Co-Founder: Lauren Dunford
Why: Reindustrialization means improving existing factories and building new ones that work with high efficiency. Guidewheel provides the sensors, intelligence, and operational tools to save energy, improve uptime, and drive performance in any factory. This crosscutting tool is driving value in factories and manufacturing. 

Janelle Goulard at Pangaea Ventures

🪨 Princeton Critical Minerals (PURELi)

🇺🇸 New Jersey
Co-Founder and CEO: Sean Zheng
Why: The looming lithium supply gap and slow extraction cycles and tough economics facing brine pond operators are shaping up to present substantial hurdles in the drive for electrification. Princeton Critical Minerals’ novel “Lilypad” technology for evaporation ponds enables 2x faster evaporation and over 96% efficiency in solar energy conversion compared to conventional ponds, improving the economics and scalability of lithium production, and drastically reducing the time, land, and water needed per ton of lithium extracted.

🦠 Kanvas Biosciences*

🇺🇸 New Jersey
Co-Founder and CEO: Matthew Cheng
Why: The enormous untapped potential of the human microbiome is constrained by poor visibility into how microbial communities interact and influence health outcomes, leaving a multi-billion-dollar diagnostic and therapeutic opportunity largely unrealized. Kanvas Biosciences’ breakthrough HiPR-FISH spatial biology technology maps host-microbiome interactions in situ to unlock unprecedented insight into microbiomes in their native environment. The company’s integrated platform enables discovery, development and manufacturing of novel live biotherapeutics that will improve patients' response rates to immune checkpoint inhibitors for cancer treatment.

🧪 Tidal Vision*

CEO: Craig Kasberg
🇺🇸 Washington
Why: Tidal Vision develops high-performance, biodegradable chitosan solutions through a proprietary zero-waste extraction process. Their scalable technologies enable cleaner water treatment, more effective agriculture inputs, and safer materials, offering sustainable alternatives to harmful chemicals across multiple industries.

Karen Sheffield at Pachamama Ventures

🧬 Mars Materials*

🇺🇸 Texas
CEO: Aaron Fitzgerald
Why: Mars Materials is turning insidious materials in a variety of industries into carbon sinks starting with the 1st-ever carbon negative acrylonitrile.

🔌 ElectricFish*

🇺🇸 California
CEO: Anurag Kamal
Why: ElectricFish provides reliable back-up energy to the grid when it needs it most while also providing ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure.

🌊 Celeste

🇲🇽 Mexico City
Founder and CEO: Leni Redondo
Why: Celeste is building the go-to platform for enterprise water management. They are just at the starting line, but they have made impressive progress with a simple yet revolutionary solution that F500s are loving today.

Anne-Sophie Krechting at Atlantic Labs 

🌡️ Calectra 

🇺🇸 California
CEO and Co-Founder: Pauliina Meskanen 
Why: Calectra is electrifying heavy industry with thermal storage tech that turns renewable power into ultra-high-temperature heat. Using conductive ceramic bricks, they deliver clean, on-demand energy to decarbonize sectors like cement and steel, the team unlocks a scalable path to fossil-free manufacturing. 

🦠 Again*

🇩🇰 Copenhagen
CEO and Co-Founder: Max Kufner 
Why: Again helps industries replace fossil-based production with carbon-negative alternatives through innovative gas fermentation. By converting CO₂ into acetic acid and other valuable chemicals at industrial scale, their tech and bold vision are redefining how emissions become a resource - making sustainable manufacturing truly accessible. 

🔵 ILLUTHERM

🇩🇪 Hesse
Co-Founders: Lukas Porz, Michael Scherer, Milto Vlachos
Why: ILLUTHERM is revolutionizing ceramics and heavy industry with breakthrough blue LED light technology that enables ultra-fast, efficient heating of materials. By cutting energy use and CO₂ emissions, their patented process is setting a new standard for sustainable, high-temperature manufacturing. 

Alex Behar at Buoyant Ventures 

☀️ Sunairio* 

🇺🇸 Baltimore
CEO and Founder: Rob Cirincione 
Why: In a period of unprecedented grid volatility driven by climate change and increased demand, Sunairio's derisks the deployment of renewable energy 

🌱 Biographica 

🇬🇧 UK
CEO and Co-Founder: Cecy Price
Why: Biographica is using AI to accelerate bringing new crop varieties to market, including more climate-resilient food 

🔢 dClimate Labs

🇬🇧 UK
CEO: Jon Pierre
Why: dClimate is building an AI digital twin of the earth. Having a clear understanding of the impact of different climate change scenarios can improve strategic decision making across carbon markets, insurance, energy, agriculture and logistics 

Nina Litman-Roventa at Extantia 

🔬 Altrove

🇫🇷 Paris
CEO and Co-Founder: Thibaud Martin 
Why: Altrove reinvents material discovery by combining AI models with automated labs to create inorganic materials 10 times faster and 90% cheaper than conventional methods. Its platform develops alternatives to rare earths and other critical materials, addressing both supply risks and the sustainability gap. 

📈 Lava*

🇮🇱 Sdot-Yam
CEO and Co-Founder: Doron Tamir 
Why: Lava’s unique liquid-based isothermal heat engine transforms low-temperature waste heat into electricity with unmatched efficiency, unlocking applications in geothermal energy, data centres, and long-duration storage. By partnering with industry, Lava is redefining how waste heat is captured and reused across critical energy systems.

🫧 Vema Hydrogen*

🇫🇷 Orleans
CEO: Pierre Levin 
Why: Vema aims to deliver clean, abundant hydrogen for 10,000 years at under $1/kg. Its stimulated geological hydrogen technology injects catalyst-infused brine into shallow rock, triggering natural reactions that generate hydrogen. This breakthrough can unlock affordable hydrogen for industries where green hydrogen is too expensive and unscalable. 

Christian González at Planet A Ventures 

🛠️ Arsenale Bioyards*

🇮🇹 Milan
Founders: Massimo Portincaso, Gordana M. Djordjevic, Niels Lynge Agerbaek, Matteo Zanotto, Arnaud Legris
Why: Arsenale’s technology paves the way from the fossil to the bio-economy: the biggest transformation in how we produce goods at scale since the industrial revolution. Arsenale's fully integrated, AI-driven platform will slash biomanufacturing costs by up to 90%. Its modular approach enables scaling-out instead of expensive scaling-up, making precision fermentation commercially viable across industries like food, cosmetics, and materials for the first time. 

💨 Carbon Re* 

🇬🇧 London / Cambridge
Founders: Josh Vernon, Buffy Price, Daniel Summerbell
Why: Carbon Re is decarbonising Europe's hard to abate industrial base with AI digital twins that cut costs, energy use and emissions, one factory at a time. Carbon Re is building the AI operating system that will accelerate the systemic transition across global industries like cement, steel and glass, and master the production of zero carbon materials at scale. 

🌱 Nitrovolt 

🇩🇰 Søborg
Founders: Suzanne Zamany Andersen, Mattia Saccoccio 
Why: Decentralised, sustainable ammonia production to cut emissions in the fertiliser production industry and transform modern agriculture. Nitrovolt’s technology will enable farmers to produce their own ammonia fertiliser on demand, on-site, using just renewable energy, water and air. The system is easily scaled to demand, from a few hundred to thousands of kilograms of ammonia. 

Doerte Hirschberg at Climentum Capital

🔌 Scale Energy*

🇩🇪 Berlin
Founder: Elias Aruna
Why: Scale Energy is transforming industrial sites into local powerhouses. They deploy decentralized batteries at scale to allow grid balancing and peak shaving for industrial production. 

🏬 Enerin*

🇳🇴 Vestland
CEO: Arne Høeg
Why: Enerin closes the electrification gap of industrial heating at 100 - 200 °C. This represents 5% of global energy demand and is the pass forward to replace industrial gas boilers.

🤖 Hyperion Robotics

🇫🇮 Uusimaa
Founder and CEO: Fernando de los Rios
Why: Hyperion leverages leading robotics to create low-carbon concrete structures and bring 3D printing to scale in construction.

Adam Tomassi-Russell at Deep Science Ventures 

⛏️ Thunderstone Rocks*

🇺🇸 New Mexico
CEO: Eric Burns
Why: They're building the mine of the future: onshore, cost-effective, and clean. Their high-voltage ‘lightning’ technology uses controlled electric discharge to extract metals faster, cleaner, and cheaper - without the land excavation. 

🌫️ Kairos Carbon*

🇬🇧 London
CEO and Co-Founder: Megha Raghavan 
Why: They're turning low-quality organic waste into high-quality carbon removal. 

🚢 Seabound 

🇬🇧 London
Founders: Alisha Fredriksson, Roujia Wen
Why: Seabound’s onboard carbon capture system is proven and ready today. Shipping drives 90% of the world's economy. Shipowners who want to capture a competitive edge and lead the industry’s decarbonisation now have an ocean-ready option with Seabound. 

Saurabh Tak at Sagana / Circulate Capital 

🎨 Colorifix* 

🇬🇧 Norwich
CEO: Orr Yarkoni
Why: All natural oil biobased biodegradable oil independent dye production. Up to 50% less carbon footprint and 90% less water use.

🧪 Algenesis*

🇺🇸 San Diego
CEO and Founder: Stephen Mayfield
Why: Biobased biodegradable a complete drop-in polyurethane. Unlike polyol based polyurethanes that can't be functionally on par with Oil based polyurethanes, Algenesis polyurethanes can and are therefore a perfect drop-in solution. 

🥼 Biohalo

🇩🇰 Copenhagen
CEO and Co-Founder: Nicolas Krink 
Why: The company is focussed on building biobased PFAS alternatives using fermentation and synthetic biology. 

Robert Stoecker at AENU 

🌐 ScyAI*

🇨🇭 Zurich
Why: They are re-inventing and productising quantitative Climate Risk Management for enterprises with physical assets. 

🌳 Equitable Earth* 

🇫🇷 Paris
CEO and Co-Founder: Thibault Sorret 
Why: They are cleaning up the industry by reinventing how Nature Based Carbon Projects are verified and certified 

💻 Greenshift

🇫🇷 Paris
Co-Founders: Omar Regoort, Leonid Borodaev 
Why: They are creating an operating system for sustainable cloud computing.

Who gets your vote?

Nominate a startup who deserves 10x more attention for their work to reinvent their industry - because a list of Top 40 hits harder than 39.

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Disclaimer. Startups marked with a (*) have ties to / received funding from the investor.