Climate tech startups to watch in 2026: investments on the rise and AI at the core of strategy
Climate tech startups are back on investors’ radar — and they mean business.
After two straight years of decline, the global climate venture capital market took a deep breath and turned the tide in 2025. The numbers speak for themselves: global investments grew 8%, reaching $40.5 billion, according to data from Sightline Climate. This shift was no accident — it was the result of a combination of factors including technological maturity, growing regulatory pressure, and most importantly, a new narrative around artificial intelligence applied to climate.
But what really grabbed attention was the record number of climate funds closed during the period — 179 funds raising $92 billion in new capital. That number reflects not only institutional investor confidence in the sector but also a clear signal that smart money has already figured out that sustainability and technology are no longer separate agendas. Today, they go hand in hand, and the financial returns are starting to prove it.
And there is one very clear protagonist in this turnaround: artificial intelligence. 🤖 Nearly 28 cents of every climate dollar went to AI-powered solutions — and data centers alone attracted close to $2 billion of that total. AI, which at one point was seen as a villain in energy consumption, now shows up as one of the greatest allies of climate innovation. Predictive models, energy grid optimization, real-time emissions monitoring — the list of applications grows every quarter, and the market is responding with capital.
Another decisive factor in restoring confidence in the sector was the political signal from the United States. The federal government enacted the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, making it clear which climate and energy policies would be prioritized. That clarity helped unlock a considerable volume of capital that had been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for more concrete regulatory signals before committing to long-term bets. When the political landscape finally came into focus, the money flowed — fast.
And it does not stop there. The race for critical minerals like copper and lithium has become a national security issue — with projected shortfalls of 30 to 40% by 2035. Meanwhile, climate adaptation moved beyond activist circles and became part of the investor vocabulary, with a 64% jump in funding for the space. It was exactly in this context that the Trellis team reviewed 105 candidate startups and selected the 15 most promising for 2026 — divided into three major categories: data centers, materials and innovation, and climate adaptation.
Data centers: when the problem becomes the solution
For a long time, data centers were labeled as major villains of global energy consumption. It is easy to see why: facilities running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, consuming massive amounts of electricity and generating heat at an industrial scale. But something interesting is happening now — the same startups building and optimizing these processing centers are also developing technologies to make them more efficient, cleaner, and less dependent on fossil fuels. This creative paradox is exactly the kind of innovation the climate tech market needs.
The five startups selected in this category showcase the diversity of approaches the sector is exploring. WAVR Technologies drew significant attention by developing a system that generates water from the atmosphere using waste heat from AI data centers themselves — essentially turning a wasted byproduct into a valuable resource. Airloom Energy is betting on modular wind systems that can power data centers, utility companies, and even defense installations. The pitch is to bring wind generation to locations where traditional turbines either do not fit or do not make sense.
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.
On the software front, etalytics uses artificial intelligence to cut energy waste in data center cooling systems while also reducing the need for manual operations. It is one of those cases where AI solves a problem it helped create — and does so efficiently. Aikido Technologies brought an even more radical approach: floating data centers on the open ocean. The idea might sound like science fiction, but the logic behind it is solid — the ocean offers natural cooling and virtually unlimited space, two resources that are increasingly scarce on dry land.
Rounding out the data center group, Magnefy works with AI and magnetic sensing to detect electrical failures in transformers and inverters. It might not seem like the flashiest innovation at first glance, but failures in electrical infrastructure equipment cause billions of dollars in losses every year — not to mention the environmental impact. Preventing those failures before they happen is just as important as generating clean energy.
Investor interest in this segment also reflects a very concrete economic reality: with the explosion in use of large language models and other generative AI applications, demand for computing capacity is not slowing down anytime soon. This creates a unique window of opportunity for startups that can deliver high-performance computing infrastructure with a reduced carbon footprint. Whoever cracks that balance in a scalable way will capture a huge slice of a market that is only set to grow in the coming years.
Materials and innovation: the race for the resources of the future
The energy transition has a bottleneck that many people still underestimate: it depends on physical materials. Batteries need lithium, cobalt, and manganese. Transmission cables need copper. Wind turbines need high-strength steel and rare earth elements. And the demand for all of these critical minerals is projected to explode in the coming decades, while supply shortfalls are already appearing on the horizon. Startups working on new materials, cleaner extraction processes, or functional alternatives to these inputs are literally building the backbone of the green economy.
In this category, Aepnus Technology stands out with a pretty ambitious proposition: converting industrial waste into useful chemicals for mining, batteries, textiles, and paper. Instead of extracting more resources from the planet, the idea is to repurpose what has already been extracted and discarded. Elementium Materials follows a complementary path, developing electrolytes that can be integrated directly into existing batteries to improve their performance — without requiring deep changes to current production lines.
REEgen brings a fascinating approach: it uses engineered microbes to recover critical minerals from industrial waste. It is biotechnology applied to urban mining, a field that could drastically reduce dependence on international supply chains. Smart Plastic Technologies tackles the plastic problem from a different angle. The startup creates plastic additives that maintain the material’s performance during use but allow bioassimilation at end of life. It is a proposition that speaks directly to the packaging industry and to increasingly strict regulations around plastic waste.
Closing out the materials group, EnKoat works with advanced thermal coatings for commercial roofs. It sounds simple, but the impact is significant: these coatings extend roof lifespan and reduce building energy demand for climate control. It is the kind of solution that does not make headlines but scales quickly because it solves a very real operational cost problem for commercial property owners.
What ties all of these initiatives together is the understanding that materials innovation is just as strategic as software innovation. And that realization is hitting investors hard. Governments in different countries have also begun treating access to critical minerals as a matter of sovereignty, which opens the door for public-private partnerships and incentives that did not exist before. For startups well-positioned in this space, the next three years are shaping up to be decisive — both in terms of growth and real impact on the global production system.
Climate adaptation: the investment that can no longer wait
For years, the climate debate revolved almost exclusively around mitigation — reducing emissions, decarbonizing sectors, replacing fossil fuels. But the physical reality of the planet has already changed, and it keeps changing. Extreme weather events, prolonged droughts, floods, heat waves — these are no longer future scenarios. They are the present. And it is in this context that climate adaptation shifted from a secondary topic to an investment priority, with a 64% funding increase that leaves no doubt about where the market is heading.
The adaptation startups selected by Trellis work on very practical and urgent fronts. Beehive is perhaps the most emblematic of the group: it is an AI platform that helps companies prepare for and respond to natural disasters while automating climate risk reporting. With the growing frequency of extreme events and regulatory pressure for climate-related risk disclosure, this kind of tool is becoming essential for corporate operations of any size.
Helix Earth addresses a seemingly simple problem with enormous implications: it removes moisture from air before it enters the HVAC system, reducing energy consumption of air conditioning units and improving indoor air quality. In tropical and subtropical regions — like much of Brazil —, this technology could generate significant savings and meaningfully improve thermal comfort in commercial and residential buildings.
California Cultured represents a completely different frontier of adaptation: it produces coffee and chocolate at an industrial scale through plant cell biomanufacturing. Given projections that climate change will severely affect global cocoa and coffee production in the coming decades, having a production alternative that does not depend on specific climate conditions is more than innovation — it is food security.
Nucleic Sensing Systems works with autonomous biosensors for water quality monitoring and detection of harmful biological signals. Sensegrass provides soil intelligence sensors and AI-powered agronomy tools to help farmers optimize productivity and build climate resilience. Both startups show how the convergence of field hardware and artificial intelligence is creating a new generation of tools for environmental and agricultural management. 🌱
What makes this segment especially interesting from an innovation standpoint is the convergence of data, AI, and climate science. Startups that can transform large volumes of climate data — satellites, sensors, atmospheric models — into actionable intelligence for public managers or private operators are creating immense value. And unlike many other areas of climate tech that depend on regulatory shifts or tax incentives to take off, adaptation solutions have demand that is self-explanatory: the problem is already happening, and whoever needs a solution will come looking for it.
What to expect from the 15 startups selected for 2026
The Trellis methodology for selecting the 15 most promising startups considered not only the technological potential of each company but also commercial traction, founding team quality, business model clarity, and alignment with macroeconomic trends in the sector. Of the 105 candidates reviewed, only 15 made it through the filter — which says a lot about the level of scrutiny applied and, consequently, about the quality of the companies selected.
What these startups have in common goes beyond the segment they operate in. All of them demonstrate a clear ability to use artificial intelligence as an operational lever, whether to optimize internal processes or to deliver more precise and efficient products and services to their customers. This is no coincidence — it reflects an ecosystem that has learned, over the past two years, that technology without scalability cannot solve the climate problem at the speed the planet demands. AI, in this context, has moved from being a differentiator to being a requirement.
Another common thread among the selected companies is a focus on markets with proven demand, not just promising technologies waiting for adoption. This criterion reflects the maturity of the sector: climate tech investors in 2025 and 2026 are less willing to bet on 10- or 15-year horizons and more interested in companies that can show revenue, contracts, and real customers. The 15 selected startups fit this profile well — and that is exactly why they deserve attention in the months ahead.
The pitch competitions organized by Trellis are also an interesting barometer of the moment. The five finalists in each category will present their proposals and answer investor questions at separate virtual events — data centers, materials, and climate adaptation in consecutive weeks. This open format allows the investor community and sector enthusiasts to directly evaluate the strength of the proposals and the execution capability of the founders.
The climate tech landscape in 2026 and the role of AI
Looking at the big picture, what 2025 showed is that the climate tech market has finally matured enough to attract institutional capital consistently. The narrative has shifted: this is no longer about betting on experimental technologies that might work a decade from now. The startups receiving investment today have products in the market, paying customers, and measurable impact metrics. This is a sign that the sector is moving out of the promise phase and into the delivery phase.
Artificial intelligence remains the thread connecting virtually every vertical in climate tech. From data center energy optimization to natural disaster prediction, through new materials discovery and precision agriculture, AI is present at every layer of the climate value chain. And what matters most is that this presence is not just technological — it is economic. Startups that integrate AI into their solutions can scale faster, reduce operational costs, and deliver value to customers in a more tangible way. That is the kind of competitive advantage that turns good ideas into sustainable businesses.
For those following the technology and sustainability market, the 15 startups selected by Trellis serve as a representative sample of the trends that will dominate the coming years. Smart data centers, circular materials, and climate adaptation solutions powered by data and AI are no longer niches — they are the pillars of an economy that needs to reinvent itself at record speed.
With $40.5 billion in global investments, 179 funds closed, and artificial intelligence repositioned as an ally of sustainability, the climate tech market in 2025 delivered a clear message: the turnaround is no longer a promise. It is happening now.
