🇺🇸 70 Women Founders in Climate to Know

The data says the system is stacked. The founders we’re spotlighting prove otherwise.

Even with just a fraction of the funding, women founders in climate are driving outsized impact by scaling transformative technologies, unlocking capital, and proving that resilience paired with results can break through the barriers of bias.

Of the $34 billion invested in US Climate Tech startups, solely female-founded companies raised only $136 million, just 0.4%. Mixed-gender teams fared slightly better, bringing in $2.5 billion, or about 7.3% of the total.

In this edition, we spotlight the next wave of women shaping the future of ClimateTech in the US. The women who are not just raising rounds but redefining what it means to build durable, impactful companies in one of the toughest sectors to fund.

We’ve curated both stories and data to show where progress is happening, who’s paving the way, and why now is the time to back women-led climate innovation.

Discover 12 women across the US who are breaking through the glass ceiling to combine technology and multi-million dollar funding to solve the climate crisis. And publish a database on 70 Women CEO and Founders based in the US to know.

First let’s meet 12 of them

Air Pollution

Davida Herzl, Co-Founder and CEO at Aclima  

📍 Based: San Francisco
💸 Funding Raised: $77M
💰 Investors Include: Bosch Ventures, WomensVCFund, Social Capital, ACVC, Leonid Capital Partners

Davida leads a diverse team pioneering an entirely new way to diagnose the health of our air and track climate-changing pollution.

Aclima maps and measures the effects of air pollution and greenhouse gasses using a large network that combines data from roving and stationary sensors at unprecedented scales and with block-by-block resolution.

Mobility

Sampriti Bhattacharyya, Founder and CEO at Navier

📍 Based: New York
💸 Funding Raised: $7.2 million
💰 Investors Include: Global Founders Capital, Treble, Next View Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Precursor Ventures

With a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and deep career experience in aerospace and maritime with NASA, Fermilab, and TIFR, Sampriti pioneered innovations in robotics, AI, and underwater drones through her previous venture, Hydroswarm.

Navier is America's next-generation maritime company. Their mission is to build the most compelling zero-emission marine vessels, which drastically reduce operational costs and enable a new kind of clean, scalable waterborne transportation for people and goods worldwide.

CCU

Etosha Cave, Co-Founder at Twelve

📍 Based: Berkeley
💸 Funding Raised: $929.4M
💰 Investors Include: Breakout Ventures, DCVC, Capricorn Investment, Pulse Fund, United Airlines Ventures

During her Ph.D. Etosha worked on electrochemical approaches that could be used to convert carbon dioxide and water into useful plastics and household cleaners. She put together a team of Stanford graduates to build and scale a startup that recycles CO2. 

Twelve is recycling carbon dioxide and water into higher-valued products - such as jet fuel - using metal catalysts, and electricity. 

Circularity

Megan O’Connor, Co-Founder and CEO at Nth Cycle

📍 Based: Massachusetts
💸 Funding Raised: $64.1 million
💰 Investors Include: Bloomberg NEF, Caterpillar Ventures, Equinor Ventures, MassMutual Impact Investing, VoLo Earth Ventures

Megan has devised a novel, more environmentally friendly method of recycling valuable metals from discarded batteries and electronics, using carbon nanotube filters the size of a water bottle to extract cobalt and lithium. She believes nanotube filters will make it cheaper for electronics makers to buy recycled metals than newly mined, with one-tenth the energy input.

Nth Cycle is a metal refining company. It works with scrap recyclers and miners to recover production-grade critical metals from industrial scrap, low-grade ore, and refining waste. Their patented electro-extraction technology, The Oyster — an alternative to hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy — enables customizable, clean, and consistent recovery of the critical metals for the energy transition.

Construction

 Leah Ellis, Co-Founder and CEO at Sublime Systems

📍 Based: Massachusetts
💸 Funding Raised: $202 million
💰 Investors Include: Lowercarbon Capital, Holocim

Leah co-invented Sublime’s foundational technology with Yet-Ming Chiang at MIT, where she worked as a Banting postdoctoral fellow. She received her PhD in chemistry from Dalhousie University, where she worked with Prof. Jeff Dahn on lithium-ion battery optimization in partnership with 3M and Tesla.

Sublime Systems is leading a swift and massive transition to a clean cement manufacturing future.

Energy

Shannon Miller, Co-Founder and COO at Mainspring Energy

📍 Based: Menlo Park
💸 Funding Raised: $813 million
💰 Investors Include: General Catalyst, Lightrock, US Department of Energy

Shannon is a former National Science Foundation Fellow, Shannon received funding from the Global Climate Energy Project to advance her research at Stanford University on methods for improving efficiency of fuel conversion to electricity. In conducting this research, Shannon collaborated with Matt Svrcek to design and develop the early prototype that served as the foundation for Mainspring's linear generator technology.

Mainspring Energy has developed advanced power generation technology that unlocks the full potential of distributed generation.

Food

Magi Richani, Founder and CEO at Alpine Bio

📍 Based: San Francisco
💸 Funding Raised: $75M
💰 Investors Include: Germin8 Ventures, Footprint Coalition, Fifty Years

When Magi discovered she was lactose-intolerant, she started to research and understand the condition. This led her to quit her role as engineer at Shell and launch Nobell Foods.

Nobell Foods is pioneering molecular farming, using plants as living bioreactors to produce high-value proteins at unmatched scale, cost, and sustainability. By engineering crops to express complex proteins traditionally extracted from animals or made via fermentation, Alpine Bio is establishing molecular farming as the third pillar of biomanufacturing, alongside microbial fermentation and cell culture and is the maker of Nobell Foods. 

Home Decarbonization

Lauren Salz, Co-Founder and CEO at Sealed

📍 Based: New York
💸 Funding Raised: $97.5M
💰 Investors Include: Keyframe, Fifth Wall, Footprint Coalition, MUUS Climate Partners

Lauren is passionate about using financial and technological innovation to improve the lives of American homeowners. Under Lauren’s leadership, Sealed has been named one of the 10 most innovative energy companies of 2021 by Fast Company

Sealed designs, manages, and finances home weatherisation and electrification projects. This holistic approach can cut home energy use in half with upgrades such as high-performance insulation, air sealing, and heat pump HVAC. 

Manufacturing

Pauliina Meskanen, Co-Founder & CEO at Calectra

📍 Based: San Francisco
💸 Funding Raised: $2 million
💰 Investors Include: LifeLine Ventures

Pauliina has an M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Aalto University and extensive experience in climate tech, including founding the climate innovation consultancy and media company Survivaltech.club, working as a Venture Partner at Climate Capital Bio, and as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Lifeline Ventures.  

Calectra provides zero-carbon, low-cost up to 1600°C process heat for heavy industries like cement, chemicals, glass, steel, and other metals - using their thermal storage technology. Their thermal storage technology stores off-peak renewable electricity as heat in our patent-pending bricks. The stored heat is provided to the retrofitted industrial process with up to 1600°C air.

Metals and Mining

Liz Dennett, Founder and CEO at Endolith

📍 Based: Colorado
💸 Funding Raised: $5.1 million
💰 Investors Include: Collaborative Fund, Overture VC, Nomadic Venture Partners

Liz is a passionate technologist and entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience pioneering innovative data-driven solutions in the biotech and energy industries. She has a proven track record of integrating genomics, biotechnology, and cloud-first engineering to create commercial solutions that address pressing sustainability challenges.

Endolith is a biological intelligence company transforming critical mineral recovery through engineered microbes and adaptive optimization. Its proprietary platform combines bioleaching with real-time data feedback to help mining companies extract more value from low-grade or complex ores, cleanly, efficiently, and at scale. Endolith was founded with major producers to expand recovery across copper, lithium, and rare earths.

Steel Production

Laureen Meroueh, CEO and Founder at Hertha Metals

📍 Location: Texas
💸 Funding Raised: $17 million
💰 Investors Include: Third Derivative, Pear VC, Khosla Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Foundation, Clean Energy Ventures, Berkeley HaaS Impact Fund, US Department of Energy

Laureen is the inventor of Hertha’s proprietary pyrometallurgical process for steel production, which underpins the company’s breakthrough approach. Laureen is the first female in history to invent a steelmaking technology and build a company around the innovation. Before founding Hertha Metals, she was the CEO of Alchemr, a Hydrogen startup, where she led the development and commercialization of anion exchange membrane water electrolysis.

Hertha Metals is a venture-backed startup that has unveiled a breakthrough process to accelerate American-Made Steel. The company has developed a novel technology to modernize iron and steel production with greater efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. Hertha already operates the country’s largest novel iron and steelmaking pilot plant at a tonnage-per-day scale.

Water

Shreya Dave, Co-Founder and CEO at Via Separations

📍 Location: Massachusetts
💸 Funding Raised: $57.4 million
💰 Investors Include: The Engine, Safar Partners, Embark Ventures

Shreya has a strong academic background from MIT, she holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and has extensive experience in energy policy and sustainability. Her innovative approach targets the significant energy waste in chemical production, aiming to reduce it by 90% with novel membrane technology.

Via Separations’ innovation is a highly selective and robust membrane filter that replaces energy inefficient heat-based separations in industrial processes. Spun out of MIT, Via has scaled up the technology by more than 10 million times and demonstrated working prototypes at commercial scale.

💸 US Women Founders on Stage

We’re thrilled to announce powerhouse US women Founders joining us on the HackSummit stage.

These 3 CEOs and Founders are rewriting the rules in deep tech, materials and mobility to prove that innovation knows no limits when driven by purpose and determination.

Introducing the speakers:

🦠 Liz Dennett – Founder and CEO of Endolith, harnessing microbes for sustainable critical mineral extraction
⛏️ Laureen Meroueh – Founder and CEO of Hertha Metals, forging the future of steel to redefine how we build our world
🛥️ Sampriti Bhattacharyya – Founder and CEO of Navier, creating electric hydrofoiling boats that make water transport clean and efficient.

Plus discover 100+ more Founders shaping the frontier of innovation at Newlab on December 10-11th.

70+ US Women in Climate to Know

Access the full database of US Women in Climate to know

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