Climate tech startups are back on the radar with full force in 2026
Climate tech startups are back on investors’ radar, and they mean business. After two consecutive years of decline, the global investment market in the sector made a major comeback in 2025, moving $40.5 billion — an 8% increase over the previous year, according to data from Sightline Climate. And it didn’t stop there: it was also a historic year for climate-focused funds, with 179 funds closed and an impressive $92 billion in new capital raised.
Part of this recovery has a very specific political context. The passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the United States made it much clearer which technologies and policies the federal government was willing to support, and that was enough to unleash a flood of capital that had been sitting on the sidelines. The market exhaled, funds started moving, and the climate innovation ecosystem began buzzing with an energy that hadn’t been seen in at least three years.
In the middle of all this, one name keeps showing up as the main character in this new chapter: artificial intelligence. 🤖 Nearly 28 cents of every dollar invested in climate tech went toward AI-powered solutions, with data centers alone attracting close to $2 billion. Critical minerals like copper and lithium also entered the conversation with urgency, since the projected deficit by 2035 hovers between 30% and 40%, making the topic as much a national security issue as an environmental one. And climate adaptation finally earned its status as an asset class, with funding in the space growing 64% during the period.
It’s against this backdrop that Trellis selected the 15 most promising startups to watch in 2026, divided into three key categories: data centers, materials innovation, and climate adaptation. A team of analysts evaluated 105 candidates based on four criteria — solution innovation, commercial traction, impact potential, and founding team strength — to arrive at five finalists per category. 🌱
Greener data centers: where AI meets sustainability
The explosion of artificial intelligence has brought with it a problem that a lot of people still underestimate: the massive energy consumption of data centers. Training large language models, processing data in real time, and keeping global infrastructure running 24/7 requires an amount of energy that already places these facilities among the largest electricity consumers on the planet. That’s exactly where a new generation of climate tech startups comes in, focused on making that equation more sustainable — whether through consumption efficiency, smart cooling, or integration with renewable energy sources. The nearly $2 billion invested in this segment alone in 2025 makes it clear that the market sees one of the decade’s biggest opportunities right here.
Receive the best innovation content in your email.
All the news, tips, trends, and resources you're looking for, delivered to your inbox.
By subscribing to the newsletter, you agree to receive communications from Método Viral. We are committed to always protecting and respecting your privacy.
Among the five startups Trellis selected in this category, each one tackles the problem from a different and complementary angle:
- WAVR Technologies — Generates water from the atmosphere using waste heat from AI data centers. The solution, led by CEO Rich Sloan, transforms an unwanted byproduct — wasted heat — into an essential resource for cooling and other applications, creating a smarter cycle within the infrastructure itself.
- Airloom Energy — Develops modular wind energy systems designed for data centers, utilities, and defense. Under the leadership of CEO Neal Rickner, the company offers a compact and scalable alternative to traditional large wind turbines, enabling distributed renewable energy generation right where it’s consumed.
- etalytics — AI software that reduces energy waste in data center cooling and minimizes manual operations. Co-founded by Niklas Panten, the platform optimizes cooling systems in real time — systems that typically account for 30% to 40% of a facility’s total energy consumption.
- Aikido Technologies — Builds floating offshore data centers. Led by CEO Sam Kanner, the concept is radical: take the infrastructure out to sea, leveraging the natural cooling power of water and reducing pressure on terrestrial power grids and freshwater resources on land.
- Magnefy — Uses AI and magnetic sensing to detect electrical faults in transformers and inverters. With Joseph Kao as co-founder and CEO, the technology provides predictive maintenance that can prevent unplanned outages and energy efficiency losses across the entire distribution chain feeding data centers.
What connects these startups is a very clear vision that innovation and sustainability don’t have to be opposing forces. Quite the opposite — the best solutions for data center energy consumption are also the most competitive from an economic standpoint. Reducing energy costs means increasing operating margins, and that makes environmental and financial arguments walk hand in hand, something that makes conversations with investors and corporate clients much easier. The trend is that in 2026, these companies will begin locking in long-term contracts with major cloud providers, solidifying a strategic position that could be very hard to challenge down the road.
Materials innovation: the race for the minerals of the future
The projected 30% to 40% deficit in critical minerals like copper and lithium by 2035 isn’t just a supply chain problem. It’s a direct threat to the global capacity to decarbonize the economy, since these materials are essential components of batteries, electric motors, solar panels, and all the infrastructure that supports the energy transition. Securing access to these inputs has become a matter of national security for multiple countries, going well beyond the environmental agenda and squarely into the geopolitical arena. The climate tech startups working on this front are developing everything from new extraction processes with lower environmental impact to alternative materials that reduce or eliminate dependence on scarce inputs.
This is a field with extremely high technical complexity, long development cycles, and significant barriers to entry, which makes the companies that manage to advance here particularly valuable to investors with a long-term outlook. Here are the five selected by Trellis in this category:
- Aepnus Technology — Converts industrial waste into useful chemicals for mining, batteries, textiles, and paper. Led by CEO and co-founder Lukas Hackl, the company tackles both the industrial disposal problem and input scarcity simultaneously, creating value where there used to be only cost.
- Smart Plastic Technologies — Creates plastic additives that maintain material performance during use and allow bio-assimilation at end of life. CSO Sumathi Pakki leads an approach that seeks to solve one of the planet’s biggest environmental problems without sacrificing the functionality of plastics in industrial applications.
- REEgen — Uses genetically engineered microorganisms to recover critical minerals from industrial waste. Co-founder and CEO Alexa Schmitz is betting on biotechnology as a cleaner and more efficient extraction route, competing directly with traditional chemical processes that generate massive environmental liabilities.
- Elementium Materials Inc — Develops drop-in electrolytes to improve battery performance. With CTO Gustavo Hobold leading the technology, the company focuses on upgrades that can be integrated into existing batteries, accelerating adoption without requiring radical changes to the production chain.
- EnKoat — Extends the lifespan of commercial roofs and reduces building energy demand through advanced thermal barrier coatings. Co-founder and CEO Matthew Aguayo is positioning the startup at the intersection of materials innovation and building energy efficiency.
Artificial intelligence also shows up here as a powerful ally. AI-based materials discovery platforms are dramatically accelerating the process of identifying compounds with specific properties, testing hypotheses computationally before any physical experiment, and optimizing formulations at a speed that would be impossible through traditional methods. What used to take decades of lab research can now be compressed into months, and that completely changes the pace at which new solutions reach the market.
Beyond the discovery of new materials, there’s an equally important segment focused on recycling and repurposing minerals that are already in circulation. With the global fleet of electric vehicles growing at a rapid pace, the volume of batteries reaching end of life in the coming years represents both a logistical challenge and a massive economic opportunity. Startups developing efficient processes to recover lithium, cobalt, and other precious materials from used batteries are positioned to capture value in a market that practically didn’t exist five years ago. The combination of regulatory pressure, virgin raw material scarcity, and technological advances creates a very favorable environment for those who bet early on this segment. 🔋
Climate adaptation: the segment that finally earned investors’ respect
For a long time, climate adaptation was treated as the poor cousin of mitigation. While clean energy and energy efficiency solutions received billions in investment, the technologies designed to help communities, cities, and companies adapt to the already unavoidable impacts of climate change were left on the margins of major funding rounds. That started to change quite clearly in 2025, with a 64% increase in sector financing and the definitive recognition that climate adaptation is, in fact, a legitimate asset class with consistent returns. The market finally understood that extreme weather events aren’t passing anomalies but a new normal that demands specific infrastructure, technology, and services to manage.
The five startups Trellis highlighted in this category work across a broad spectrum of solutions ranging from disaster management to resilient agriculture:
- Beehive — An AI platform that helps companies prepare for and respond to natural disasters while automating climate risk reporting. CEO Adriel Lubarsky built a tool that shifts crisis management from reactive to proactive, using predictive data to anticipate scenarios and reduce losses.
- Nucleic Sensing Systems — Deploys autonomous biosensors that monitor water quality and harmful biological signals in real time. The technology is especially relevant in post-disaster scenarios and for communities that depend on water sources vulnerable to contamination.
- Helix Earth — Removes moisture before the cooling process, cutting air conditioning energy consumption and improving indoor air quality. Co-founded by Rawand Rasheed, the company offers an elegant solution to a problem that will only get worse as heat waves become more frequent and intense.
- California Cultured — Produces coffee and chocolate at industrial scale through plant cell biomanufacturing. CEO Alan Perlstein is building a concrete alternative for agricultural supply chains that are being deeply affected by climate change, especially in tropical regions.
- Sensegrass — Provides soil intelligence sensors and AI-based agronomy tools to help farmers optimize yields and build climate resilience. CEO Lalit Gautam leads a solution that connects granular field data with actionable recommendations, making precision agriculture accessible at scale.
What makes this segment particularly interesting from an innovation standpoint is that climate adaptation solutions often have a very direct and immediate commercial appeal. Unlike mitigation technologies whose benefits are diffuse and long-term, a platform that helps an insurance company better price flood risk or that enables a farmer to save 30% on water usage has a measurable and fast return on investment. This makes it easier to generate revenue and build sustainable business models, which in turn attracts more capital and accelerates growth. It’s a virtuous cycle that’s solidifying right now, and the companies that are well positioned in 2026 will hold a considerable competitive advantage in the years that follow. 🌍
Live pitch competitions to meet the finalists
Beyond the published list, Trellis organized a series of virtual pitch competitions where the founders of all 15 startups present their solutions and answer questions from investors live. The events take place on consecutive Wednesdays at noon Eastern Time: the data centers round was scheduled for May 20, the materials round for May 27, and the climate adaptation round for June 3. Each session brings together the five finalists from the respective category, offering a chance to see the technical depth and market vision of each team in action.
This competition format has become a valuable barometer for the climate tech ecosystem. The questions investors ask during the pitches tend to reveal which metrics and business models are actually attracting capital, and the founders’ responses give a clear measure of how mature each solution really is. For anyone following the sector, these are events that serve as a kind of preview of what’s going to gain traction over the next 12 to 18 months.
The outlook for 2026 and the central role of artificial intelligence
The outlook taking shape for 2026 is one of a climate tech ecosystem that’s more mature, more diversified, and with far more capital available than at any previous point. Artificial intelligence has gone from being a differentiator to a baseline expectation in virtually every category, whether it’s optimizing data center energy consumption, accelerating the discovery of new materials, or analyzing climate risks with surgical precision.
The convergence of AI and sustainability is creating a new type of company that doesn’t fit neatly into the traditional categories of cleantech or deep tech. These are businesses that are born with a computational intelligence layer integrated from day one, capable of learning and adapting as they collect real-world data. This gives these startups a dynamic competitive advantage that tends to widen over time, creating strategic moats that are hard to replicate for competitors who show up late to the game.
The takeaway from this Trellis report is pretty straightforward: the climate technology sector has moved past the promise phase and has firmly entered the execution phase. With $92 billion in fresh committed capital, the question is no longer whether these solutions will find a market, but which companies will manage to scale fast enough to capture the demand that’s already knocking on the door. The 15 startups on this list represent just the tip of the iceberg, but they offer a pretty faithful snapshot of the bets that investors and analysts consider most promising for the years ahead. 🚀
