Trees and forests: a growing asset class

In the last two years we have seen Venture Capital start to back startups tackling the biodiversity crisis: from protecting forests to cleaning oceans to wildlife conservation. The common denominator here is natural capital: the world’s stock of natural resources which includes geology soils, air, water, and all living organisms.

We've discovered and analysed over 100 startups that are working on forests and wildlife conversation.

VC investment into “Investing into nature” startups

Last week Sylvera - a data platform for monitoring nature-based carbon offsets - raised a $32M Series A round from Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Salesforce Ventures and LocalGlobe. This is the third largest round ever raised by this group of startups, following Better Place Forests’ Series B in January 2020 and Drone Seed Series A round on September 2021.

Discover the 100 startups👇

Access the landscape

In other news

🌳 The Natural Capital Approach - Oxford Martin School - lecture on YouTube

🌿 Pachama, Ecosia, Terraformation present at NOAH21 Zurich - videos on YouTube

🔋 Battery costs rise as lithium demand outstrips supply - Financial Times

Latest impact deals:

The largest this week:

🇺🇸 Plenty - a vertical farming startup - raised a $400M Series E round from Softbank, Walmart and JS Capital Management. Investment into vertical farming startups was at similar level in 2019, 2020 and reached it all-time high in 2021 with $700M invested. 

🇮🇳 Ola Electric - an electric scooter manufacturer subsidiary of Ola - raised a $200M round from Tekne Capital Management, Edelweiss, and Alpine Investors at a $5.0B valuation. Ola Electric reached the $1B valuation in July 2019 when Softbank invested $250M in the company.

🇫🇷 Descartes Underwriting - an insurtech company specialized in climate risk modelling - raised a $120M Series B round from Alma Mundi Ventures, Eurazeo, Seaya Ventures, Highland Europe, Serena, BlackFin Capital Partners, and Cathay Innovation. Descartes Underwriting is now the #5 most capitalized impact insurtech startup globally.

Other notable impact deals: 

🇧🇪 Cowboy - an electric bike manufacturer - raised a $80M Series C round from Index Ventures, Tiger Global, TriplePoint Capital, Isomer Capital, Future Positive Capital, Exor Seeds, HCVC, and Siam Capital. This makes of Cowboy the second most capitalized e-bike manufacturer after the Dutch VanMoof.

🇮🇱 H2Pro - a green hydrogen startup - raised a $75M Series B funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Tamasek, Yara Ventures, and ArcelorMittal. Israeli impact startups already raised $517M in 2022 YTD.

🇺🇸 Kula Bio - a sustainable nitrogen fertilizer startup - raised a $50M Series B round from Lowercarbon Capital, Collaborative Fund, iSelect Fund, and the Grantham Foundation. Sustainable fertigation startups raised a record $630M last year.

🇪🇪 Skeleton Technologies - a manufacturer of high power density ultracapacitor - raised a €38M in Series D funding at a €207M valuation from InnoEnergy, Nidoco Group, Taavet Hinrikus, and other investors. Skeleton Technologies is the most valuable Estonian impact startup followed by Click & Grow and Ampler Bikes.

🇳🇴 Heaten - a developer of heat pumps for industrial usage - raised a €6M Series A round from Shell Ventures, Nysno Climate Investments, and Azolla Ventures. You can discover other startups working on heat pumps here.

🇨🇦 Nectar Technologies - a precision beekeeping technology startup - raised an undisclosed Seed round from Koan Capital. Interested in bees & pollination startups? You can check out other 44 startups here.

Read up on all the latest impact deals in Dealroom.co

Notable exits:

🇫🇷 Plume Labs - an air quality tracker startup - was acquired by AccuWeather.

Job opportunities

Startups working on SDG 15: Life on land are hiring for 518 roles. 

🇳🇱 At dealroom.co we are hiring across all departments for 18 roles including: Ecosystem Community Manager, Account Executive, and Business Analyst.

Discover 28,000+ job openings at impact startups (login for full results)

Tip of the week

We have mentioned that Ola Electric is a unicorn company, specifically a company that became a “$1B company as a subsidiary” what does this mean? How does dealroom classifies unicorn a between “Post-IPO $1B”, “Post Private Equity $1B” and more?

We wrote a dedicated blog post about unicorns here.

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Knowledge partners

Matteo Renoldi

Impact Tech Specialist
Dealroom.co

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