Climate AI Startups: 19 Companies Using AI for Sustainability (2023-2026)

Data: Bot Memo analysis of 1,424 funded deals across climate-related AI companies

Climate AI startups have pulled in $70.5B across 1,424 funded deals since 2023, confirming that investors treat artificial intelligence as a load-bearing pillar of the energy transition, not a sideshow. Bot Memo’s analysis of climate-related companies in the database reveals a market that skews heavily toward the US (31% of deals), runs on Seed-stage capital (28.5% of deals), and is producing billion-dollar rounds at a pace that would have been unthinkable three years ago. The growth in climate tech funding and ai climate change solutions shows no sign of slowing.

The median deal sits at $12M, but the top end pulls the average to $49.5M, reflecting capital concentration in a handful of infrastructure-scale bets.

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On this page

• Climate AI Startups Raised $70.5B Across 1,424 Deals Since 2023
• 19 Climate AI Startups Using AI for Sustainability
• Where Climate AI Funding Is Concentrated: US Leads with 31% of Deals
• How AI Is Solving Climate Change: 5 Key Application Areas
• Climate AI Funding by Stage: Seed Dominates with 28.5% of Deals
• Which Investors Are Backing Climate AI Startups?
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Methodology

Climate AI Startups Raised $70.5B Across 1,424 Deals Since 2023

The numbers tell a clear story: climate tech funding is not contracting, it is consolidating. Global climate tech VC and growth investment reached $40.5B in 2025 alone, an 8% increase year-over-year. Bot Memo’s dataset, which tracks AI-tagged companies across this broader climate tech universe, captured 1,424 funded rounds totaling $70.5B between January 2023 and early 2026.

The deal flow breaks down by year: 334 deals closed in 2023, 499 in 2024, 482 in 2025, and 105 so far in Q1 2026. That near-flat deal count between 2024 and 2025 masks a shift in deal composition: growth-stage rounds jumped while early-stage volume held steady. Climate tech investment 2025 held strong despite a broader venture slowdown.

Crusoe illustrates the scale investors are writing checks at. The Denver-based company raised $1.375B in a Series E at a $10B+ valuation, building renewable-powered AI infrastructure that directly ties compute demand to clean energy supply. When the largest round in Bot Memo’s dataset is an AI infrastructure company powered by renewables, the convergence between AI and climate tech is no longer theoretical.

Metric	Value
Funded deals	1,424
Total funding	$70.5B
Median deal size	$12M
Average deal size	$49.5M
Top vertical	Energy & Sustainability

Source: Bot Memo analysis of 1,424 climate AI deals (2023-2026)

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19 Climate AI Startups Using AI for Sustainability

These 19 green AI companies represent the highest-funded climate AI startups in Bot Memo’s dataset. They span renewable energy infrastructure, carbon transformation, battery technology, fusion energy, and green hydrogen, grouped below by their primary application area.

Renewable Energy Infrastructure

Arevon Energy secured $1.1B in Growth funding to develop the Eland 2 Solar-plus-Storage project in California. Based in Scottsdale, the company operates one of the largest renewable energy portfolios in the US.

Avantus secured a majority investment led by KKR (with EIG), combining equity and development financing topping $1.0B, for its solar development platform. The San Diego-based developer focuses on utility-scale solar projects across the western United States.

Recurrent Energy secured a $500M commitment from BlackRock to expand its global renewable energy platform from Austin.

Pivot Energy closed a $450M distributed solar debt warehouse facility, one of the largest of its kind, from Denver.

AI-Powered Energy & Compute Infrastructure

Crusoe raised $1.375B (Series E, Denver) to build AI compute infrastructure powered by stranded and renewable energy sources. The company’s power pipeline grew over 4x to more than 45 GW in 2025.

Nscale raised $1.1B in a Series B round for its AI-native hyperscale infrastructure platform. Based in London, Nscale powers GPU clusters with renewable energy. This is one of many AI infrastructure startups building the physical layer for AI workloads.

5C Group secured $835M for AI infrastructure and data center development out of Montreal.

EcoDataCenter raised €450M in debt financing (Falun, Sweden) for sustainable digital infrastructure: data centers designed from the ground up around energy efficiency and renewable power.

Takanock secured $500M for integrated power solutions for data centers from Traverse City, MI.

Energy Storage & Battery Technology

Base Power raised $1.0B in a Series C round to deploy distributed home battery systems from Austin. The company uses IoT sensors and demand forecasting to optimize energy storage across residential networks.

Form Energy raised $405M in a Series F round led by T. Rowe Price, bringing total funding to roughly $1.2B, for multi-day energy storage systems. Based in Somerville, the company is building iron-air batteries designed to store renewable energy for 100+ hours.

Group14 raised $463M (Series D, Woodinville, WA) to scale its silicon battery materials, which promise higher energy density for next-generation lithium-ion batteries.

Fusion & Next-Generation Power

Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised $863M in a Series B2 round from Devens, MA. The company is building SPARC, a fusion demonstration machine, with backing from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Google, Khosla Ventures, and NVIDIA. CFS has raised close to $3B to date.

X-Energy Reactor Company secured $700M (Series D, Rockville) for advanced small modular nuclear reactors, with an 11 GW orderbook and partnerships with Amazon and Dow.

Fervo Energy raised $462M in a Series E led by B Capital, building enhanced geothermal systems in Houston. Cape Station in Utah will deliver its first 100 MW in 2026, scaling to 500 MW of firm, carbon-free power by 2028.

Carbon Transformation & Green Hydrogen

Twelve raised a $645M funding package including a $200M Series C (Berkeley) to transform captured CO2 into sustainable aviation fuel and e-chemicals. United Airlines Ventures is among its investors. The company’s AirPlant One facility targets lifecycle emissions 90% lower than fossil jet fuel.

Sunfire secured over €500M (a €215M Series E equity round plus EIB debt and grants, Dresden) for green hydrogen electrolyzer manufacturing expansion through 2030.

Reneo raised €600M from Hamburg for decarbonizing residential real estate through digital twin technology and conservation innovation.

Climate-Smart Agriculture & Emerging Markets

Ecozen raised $30M in Series C funding from Pune, India to scale climate-smart solar solutions for agriculture, representing an important cleantech AI companies story outside the Western markets.

The geographic spread across these 19 companies reveals a clear pattern. 13 of the 19 are US-based, but the largest non-US rounds (Nscale at $1.1B in London, 5C Group at $835M in Montreal, Reneo at €600M in Hamburg, and Sunfire at €500M in Dresden) show that climate AI capital is not exclusively an American story. For a broader view of how AI funding distributes across sectors, see Bot Memo’s AI startups by vertical industry map.

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Where Climate AI Funding Is Concentrated: US Leads with 31% of Deals

The United States accounts for 442 of 1,424 funded climate AI deals, 31.0% of total deal flow. The UK follows with 99 deals (7.0%), Germany with 70 (4.9%), and Canada with 48 (3.4%).

Country	Deals	Share
United States	442	31.0%
United Kingdom	99	7.0%
Germany	70	4.9%
Canada	48	3.4%
France	28	2.0%
India	26	1.8%
Netherlands	26	1.8%
Switzerland	24	1.7%
Sweden	21	1.5%
Australia	14	1.0%

Source: Bot Memo analysis of 1,424 climate AI deals (2023-2026)

San Francisco tops the city-level ranking, consistent with broader AI funding patterns. But the distribution across US cities tells a different story from pure-play AI. Denver (Crusoe, Pivot Energy), Austin (Base Power, Recurrent Energy), and Houston (Fervo Energy) feature prominently: cities with deep energy-sector roots, not just tech talent.

Global climate-focused funds exceeded $100B in 2025, with European investors accounting for roughly half. Germany’s strength in green hydrogen (Sunfire) and building decarbonization (Reneo) reflects the country’s industrial manufacturing base. The UK’s 99 deals lean toward AI infrastructure and energy software, with Nscale’s $1.1B round anchoring the list.

India and Australia round out the top 10, both punching above their weight relative to overall AI funding patterns. Similar geographic concentration patterns appear across other verticals. Bot Memo’s analysis of top 25 AI robotics startups shows comparable US dominance but with different secondary markets.

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How AI Is Solving Climate Change: 5 Key Application Areas

AI powered sustainability is not a single technology. It is a set of tools applied across five distinct problem domains, from renewable energy AI startups optimizing grids to AI environmental monitoring platforms tracking emissions, each with its own funding dynamics and maturity curve. These ai climate change solutions are attracting capital across stages.

Grid Optimization and Energy Management

AI grid optimization is the most commercially mature application area. Companies like Base Power use IoT sensors and demand forecasting models to balance distributed energy storage across residential networks. The 586 companies in Bot Memo’s dataset tagged with “Renewable Energy” are disproportionately focused on this category: software that makes existing grids smarter rather than building new generation capacity.

Carbon Tracking and Transformation

Carbon emissions AI spans two approaches: measurement (tracking Scope 1-3 emissions) and transformation (converting CO2 into useful products). Carbon capture startups like Twelve, whose $645M round funds carbon-to-jet-fuel technology, represent the transformation end, while software-layer carbon accounting tools dominate the Seed and Series A stages. These green AI companies are building the infrastructure for corporate net-zero commitments.

Climate Risk Assessment

Climate risk assessment AI helps financial institutions, insurers, and governments model physical and transition risks. Bot Memo’s dataset shows 108 companies tagged with “Risk Assessment,” making it one of the fastest-growing sub-verticals. Adaptation technologies attracted increasing capital in 2025, reflecting increased urgency around extreme weather modeling and ai for sustainability use cases in financial services.

Precision Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture AI applies computer vision, satellite imagery, and predictive models to reduce agrochemical use and water consumption. Ecozen’s Series C round for solar-powered agricultural solutions out of Pune demonstrates that this is not just a developed-world opportunity. The AI drug discovery startups sector uses similar ML techniques for molecular optimization, but applied to crop science rather than pharmaceuticals.

Materials Science and Industrial Decarbonization

AI-powered materials discovery accelerates the search for new battery chemistries, catalysts, and construction materials. Group14’s $463M round for silicon battery materials and Sunfire’s €500M for hydrogen electrolyzers both rely on computational materials science to optimize manufacturing processes. These cleantech ai companies sit at the intersection of hardware and AI.

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Climate AI Funding by Stage: Seed Dominates with 28.5% of Deals

Seed-stage deals account for 406 of 1,424 funded rounds (28.5%), making climate AI one of the most active verticals for early-stage investors. Series A follows with 317 deals (22.3%), and Series B with 170 (11.9%).

Stage	Deals	Share
Seed	406	28.5%
Series A	317	22.3%
Series B	170	11.9%
Growth	110	7.7%
Pre-Seed	76	5.3%
Series C	67	4.7%
Debt	36	2.5%
Series D	29	2.0%
Series E	15	1.1%

Source: Bot Memo analysis of 1,424 climate AI deals (2023-2026)

The Seed dominance signals two things. First, founders are still entering the market: 482 companies raised Pre-Seed or Seed rounds, meaning fresh company formation has not slowed. Second, the graduation rate from Seed to Series A matters. With 406 Seed deals and 317 Series A deals in the same time window, the conversion pipeline looks healthy compared to other AI verticals. Climate tech investment 2025 continued this pattern.

The top end tells its own story. The 29 Series D deals and 110 Growth rounds concentrated among companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Fervo Energy, Group14, and X-Energy Reactor Company pulled a disproportionate share of total capital. The 20 largest deals alone account for $16.0B, or 22.7% of the $70.5B total from just 1.4% of the deals.

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Which Investors Are Backing Climate AI Startups?

Climate tech investment attracts a different investor profile than pure-play AI software. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, founded by Bill Gates, has committed more than $2B across 110+ portfolio companies and participated in several of the largest rounds in Bot Memo’s dataset, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Fervo Energy.

The investor mix reflects climate AI’s capital intensity. Corporate investors and strategic partners appear more frequently than in software-focused AI verticals. Google backed both Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Fervo Energy. NVIDIA invested in CFS through NVentures. United Airlines backed Twelve. BlackRock committed $500M to Recurrent Energy. These are not typical VC checks; they are strategic bets on energy supply chains.

In a TechCrunch survey of 12 climate tech investors for 2026, AI-enabled energy infrastructure and data center power emerged as top themes. Other active climate tech VCs include Lowercarbon Capital, Congruent Ventures, Prelude Ventures, and Energy Impact Partners.

European VCs have carved out a dedicated lane. Planet A Ventures (Berlin) focuses on early-stage climate tech, while Clean Energy Ventures closed Fund II at $305M in 2024. The presence of these specialists explains why Germany (70 deals) and the UK (99 deals) rank so high in Bot Memo’s geographic breakdown. For investors tracking how VCs deploy across AI sub-sectors, Bot Memo’s analysis of most active AI investors provides additional context on climate tech funding flows.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Which startups are using AI for climate change?

The highest-funded climate AI startups include Crusoe ($1.375B for renewable-powered AI infrastructure), Base Power ($1.0B for AI-optimized home battery networks), and Twelve ($645M for AI-driven carbon transformation). Bot Memo tracks companies applying AI to climate and sustainability challenges, with 1,424 having raised disclosed funding since 2023.

How is artificial intelligence being used for sustainability?

AI for sustainability spans five core areas: grid optimization and energy management, carbon emissions tracking and transformation, climate risk assessment, precision agriculture, and materials science for industrial decarbonization. Renewable Energy is the most common tag across the 1,424 funded deals in Bot Memo’s dataset, appearing in 586 companies.

How much funding have climate AI startups raised?

Climate AI startups have raised $70.5B across 1,424 funded deals between 2023 and early 2026, with a $12M median deal size. The 10 largest rounds, led by Crusoe ($1.375B), Arevon Energy ($1.1B), and Nscale ($1.1B), account for $9.1B of that total (12.9%).

What is the difference between climate tech and cleantech?

Climate tech is the broader umbrella covering any technology that reduces greenhouse gas emissions or helps adapt to climate change, including software, hardware, and infrastructure. Cleantech is an older term (circa 2006-2011) that focused primarily on renewable energy hardware and suffered from a boom-bust cycle. The current climate tech wave incorporates AI, data analytics, and software layers that the earlier cleantech era lacked. Today’s cleantech ai companies look fundamentally different from their predecessors.

What is climate tech and how does AI fit in?

Climate tech covers any technology that reduces greenhouse gas emissions or helps communities adapt to climate change, spanning hardware, software, and infrastructure. AI fits in as an accelerant across five application areas: grid optimization, carbon tracking, climate risk assessment, precision agriculture, and materials discovery. Bot Memo’s dataset of 1,424 funded climate AI deals shows AI-tagged companies concentrated in Energy & Sustainability (the top vertical) and increasingly backed by both traditional VCs and corporate strategic investors.

What are the biggest climate tech companies by funding?

The highest-funded climate AI startups in Bot Memo’s dataset include Crusoe ($1.375B, renewable-powered AI infrastructure), Arevon Energy ($1.1B, utility-scale solar), Nscale ($1.1B, AI infrastructure), Base Power ($1.0B, distributed batteries), and Commonwealth Fusion Systems ($863M, fusion energy). These five companies alone raised $5.438B, or 7.7% of the $70.5B total across 1,424 deals.

Can AI help reduce carbon emissions?

AI reduces carbon emissions through multiple pathways. AI grid optimization balances distributed energy storage to reduce reliance on fossil peaker plants. Carbon emissions AI tools track Scope 1-3 emissions across supply chains, while companies like Twelve use AI to transform captured CO2 into sustainable aviation fuel. Bot Memo’s dataset tags 586 companies with “Renewable Energy” and 108 with “Risk Assessment,” showing the breadth of ai climate change solutions currently attracting venture capital.

Which VCs invest in climate AI startups?

Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gates), Lowercarbon Capital, Congruent Ventures, and Energy Impact Partners are among the most active climate-focused investors. Corporate investors like Google, NVIDIA, BlackRock, and United Airlines are also making strategic climate AI bets. Bot Memo’s dataset shows growth-stage rounds increasingly led by non-traditional VC investors including sovereign wealth funds and infrastructure-focused private equity.

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Methodology

This analysis is based on 1,424 funded AI deals tracked in the Bot Memo database from January 2023 through March 2026.

Data sources: Public funding announcements across 900+ sources monitored weekly.

Filters applied: Companies were included if their Industry Vertical, Tags, or company description contained climate, clean energy, green, sustainability, energy, environment, or carbon-related keywords. This captures both pure-play climate tech companies and AI companies with significant climate applications.

Currency: All amounts in USD unless otherwise noted. Non-USD currencies converted at prevailing exchange rates at time of deal announcement. Select European deals (Sunfire, Reneo, EcoDataCenter) are shown in their native euro amounts.

Limitations: Funding amounts reflect disclosed rounds only. Undisclosed rounds are tracked by deal count but excluded from dollar totals. Valuation data is available for a minority of deals. Multi-vertical companies (e.g., Crusoe spanning AI Infrastructure and Energy & Sustainability) are counted in each applicable vertical, so deal sums across categories may exceed the dataset total.