The Climate Tech Software space continued to gain momentum in Q3, raising USD 105 million across seven major funding rounds. The industry's expansion also posted robust annualized growth rates ranging from 44% to 550% across several indicators and startup metrics. We also identified 14 key partnerships and six product updates in Q3 across our 52 Climate Tech Software disruptors.

Q3 2021: Seven companies disclosed a total of USD 105 million in funding. This was the most well-funded quarter for the industry since the record-setting USD 208 million raised in Q1 2020, which included a massive USD 200 million raise from EcoVadis. This quarter, however, Measurabl’s USD 50 million Series C funding round lead the industry. 

Startups Supercritical and Cloverly raised funds for the first time with the latter also being spun out from Southern Company (where it was incubated). Additionally, CHOOOSE received an undisclosed amount from Shell Ventures as part of its Series A round in September.

YTD 2021: USD 208 million raised in the first nine months of 2021 across 21 disclosed rounds. This is nearly 3x more than the full year of 2020 across 23 rounds (excluding EcoVadis’ USD 200 million round).

Pre-seed and seed funding rounds were most common in Q3, accounting for 57% of all rounds and 26% of total funds raised. This still represented a decrease from 64% of rounds in H1 2020 and 88% over the whole of 2020. The proportion of Series-A-and-above rounds have increased YTD, indicating that the industry is gradually scaling up. 

Notable funding step-ups include:

Companies most commonly cited the need for product development and improvements as the motivation for raising funds this quarter.

Eight companies disclosed key growth indicators (KGI) this quarter. B2B carbon intelligence and offsetting platform Planetly reported the highest growth with customer count increasing more than threefold over the past six months. Growth stage tree-planting startup Treedom reported the lowest growth metric with just a 22% increase in total trees planted over the same period. Meanwhile, B2C carbon offsetting app Capture experienced a more than 5x increase in total app downloads.  

We identified 14 key partnerships from nine companies for the quarter. These partnerships were mostly either service or customer collaborations.

Four partnerships were blockchain-related, as the technology continued to make inroads into the Climate Tech Software space. Supply chain traceability startup Circulor and partners are attempting to develop a blockchain-enabled traceability solution for hard-to-recycle plastics, while Patch and Nori have collaborated with non-fungible token (NFT) companies. For additional insights on bringing blockchain to Climate Tech Software, check out our recent interview with Topl CEO Kim Raath. 

Partnerships with financial service providers were also a theme this quarter. Patch partnered up to convert banking reward points into carbon offsets and Ecolytiq entered multiple partnerships to leverage open banking data for carbon footprint measurement.

Additionally, B2B carbon intelligence platform Persefoni was also selected as one of the 10 finalists in the inaugural AWS Clean Energy Accelerator program in July. As a part of the program, Persefoni was to receive 1) technical, business, and go-to-market mentorship from AWS clean energy experts, 2) up to USD 50,000 in AWS Promotional Credit through AWS Activate, and 3) collaboration opportunities with AWS energy customers and members of the AWS Partner Network (APN).

Six companies announced product and related updates in Q3—the most notable being Measurabl and Patch. Measurabl’s new feature allows it to accurately measure the proportion of renewable energy use when calculating a user’s carbon footprint, while Patch introduced a new feature to calculate the carbon footprint from Bitcoin and Ethereum use.