Carbon13, the Venture Builder for the climate emergency, has announced new investments in six ventures through its accelerator, the Venture Launchpad. Each venture has received a £120K pre-seed investment. This follows the closure of $2.2 million for startup investments by the end of 2025.
Investments by Carbon13 Venture Launchpad
The six ventures, which include cutting-edge technology for biochar-based polystyrene alternatives, smart wall HVAC systems, net-negative insect proteins, AI-powered circular fashion, and food waste management, are united by the cross-cutting theme of waste. Full descriptions of the ventures are below.
- Future By Insects: It combines microalgae and insect production to create a world-first carbon net-negative insect protein for animal feed. This will tackle the industry’s annual 2.5bn CO2e global emissions and promote a greener future.
- Anzen Climate Wall: It is a novel ductless indoor climate control system that performs space heating, cooling, and heat recovery ventilation within a single unit. Our decentralised wall-mounted unit redefines how residents engage with their indoor climate while reducing energy bills and improving indoor air quality.
- Eslando: It is a pioneering startup tackling textile waste within the fashion industry. Our innovative solution leverages digital product passports (DPPs) and AI-powered sorting to empower fashion brands and waste management companies to recover materials at scale efficiently.
- Carbon Cell: The startup is on a mission to eliminate polystyrene trash with a patent-pending, non-toxic, compostable foam material made from carbon-negative biochar and natural binders.
- Remy: Formerly Taste Don’t Waste, it leverages AI and automation to support busy households in reducing their food waste by 70%, saving them time and money. In doing so, Remy collects novel user data to drastically improve corporate partners’ Scope 3 emissions reporting, commercial strategies, and waste mitigation efforts.
- Fermtech: It is a climate biotech company from Oxford that is meeting the demand for affordable and sustainable protein ingredients. Their novel system converts side streams from the food industry, creating nutritious and flavourful products.
What’s interesting is that five of these Carbon13-backed ventures have female founders. Notably, over 60% of the whole Carbon13 portfolio companies have female founders.
Focus on reducing emissions
Founded in 2021 in the Cambridge tech ecosystem, Carbon13 has now worked with over 500 founders across their Venture Builder and Venture Launchpad programmes. In those two years, they have worked with names like Kita, Infyos, Nium, Biozeroc, Materials Nexus, and Tierra Foods.
Carbon13 works with every venture to develop plans to reduce or remove ten million tonnes of CO₂ when scaled. It works by supporting founders to integrate carbon reduction in every part of their strategy so that, when they scale their startup, they also scale their carbon reduction.
The companies that Carbon13 invested in its latest cohort are looking to reduce or utilise that waste. They show that waste can create value, such as leveraging food waste to develop new products or eliminate it by making the system more efficient, etc.
All these startups have an impact goal for greenhouse gas emissions as a standard because reduction is the cornerstone of the Carbon13 mission. Emissions reductions are crucial, but these six ventures showcase the importance of looking beyond one impact metric. They tackle other planetary issues, such as microplastics, that are not captured in a standard life cycle assessment.
Commenting on the investments, their impact potential, and the profiles of the six ventures, CEO & Co-founder of Carbon13, Dr Nicky Dee, said: “All our ventures contribute to net zero, but tracking emissions tells just part of the story. We can see other key benefits, such as health from improving air quality and avoiding ecotoxicity and microplastics when discarded. Other companies will prompt new economic pathways as they disrupt the “normal” way of doing things.”
