– Iron Ox is a San Carlos CA-based agtech startup.
– The company raised $53M in Series C funding.
– The round was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
– The company intends to use the funds to expand its grocery store presence, accelerate hiring, particularly of plant scientists, engineers, greenhouse operators and roboticists, and grow its research and development programs, and its manufacturing scale across the United States.

– Doconomy from Stockholm develops a global climate impact technology company.
– Series D $17M round was led by CommerzVentures with participation from existing investors such as Mastercard, Wiklöf Holding and Ålandsbanken.
– The company intends to use the funds to accelerate continued expansion, support the further development of its impact applied portfolio; enabling impact calculations on transactions, lifestyle, products and companies of all shapes and sizes, and recruit new hires.

– Bayer’s impact investment arm Leaps has co-led a USD 15m Series A investment round in agriculture and biotechnology innovator, Andes.
– Other new investors Builders VC, Germin8, Accelr8 and Wilson Sonsini participated, alongside existing investors KdT Ventures and Endurance.
– Through its novel seed treatment technology, called ‘Microprime’, Andes is reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers.
– The California-based company has developed a process for seamlessly integrating seeds with a unique library of microbes that colonize the seed’s root structure. This kick-starts a process known as biological nitrogen fixation, enabling the crop to draw down nitrogen from the air instead of relying on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.

– Claros Technologies is a St. Paul, Minn.-based advanced materials company.
– The company closed an $5m Series A funding round.
– The round was led by 3×5 Partners.
– The new investment will be used to expand the applications of their technology at the scale required to address problems for which the world needs immediate solutions.

– WeSpire, a platform for employee experience programs, has secured $13M in a Series B funding.
– The round led by Level Structured Capital.
– This funding will help WeSpire expand sales, marketing and customer success teams and drive product innovation.

– Gaiascope is a Boston MA-based wholesale electricity price forecasting company.
– Company raised $2M in seed funding.
– The round was led by VoLo Earth Ventures with participation from Khosla Ventures and Y-Combinator.
– The new investment will be used to expand the company’s business reach.

– v2food is an alternative protein company based in Sidney, Australia.
– The company raised €45m in Series B extension funding.
– The round was led by Astanor Ventures, with participation from China’s leading e-commerce platform for services as a new strategic investor, as well as existing investors Huaxing Growth Capital Fund, Main Sequence and ABC World Asia.
– The new investment will be used to bring the company’s plant-based meat products to Europe and Asia.

– MGA Thermal, a thermal energy storage company, raised $8m in funding.
– The round was led by Main Sequence, a venture firm founded by Australia’s national science agency that recently launched a new $250m fund.
– Alberts Impact Capital, New Zealand’s Climate Venture Capital Fund, The Melt and returning investor CP Ventures participated, along with angel investors like Chris Sang, Emlyn Scott and Glenn Butcher.
– Based in Newcastle, Australia, MGA Thermal was founded in April 2019 by Erich Kisi and Alexander Post after nearly a decade spent researching and developing miscibility gap alloys technology at the University of Newcastle.
– When asked to explain MGA tech in layperson’s terms, Kisi used a delicious analogy.

– Beeflow, a startup that announced the close of a $8.3m Series A round, is looking to both save the bees and help farmers be more efficient and effective at the same time.
– The financing round was led by Ospraie Ag Science, with participation from Future Ventures’ Steve Jurvetson, Jeff Wilke, Vectr Ventures, SOSV’s IndieBio and Grid Exponential.
– The startup uses proprietary scientific technology that essentially makes bees healthier, particularly in cold weather.
– A wealth of research led the company to understand that certain plant-based foods and molecules, when fed to the bees, can reduce the mortality rate of bees by up to 70 percent, and help them perform better in colder weather.
– You might be wondering what I mean by performance. That’s fair.

– The Single Origin Food Co. from Wilmington, Del. raised $1.1m in seed funding.
– The round was led by A’Z Angels.
– The company has established long-term partnerships with farmers who share mutual commitments to sustainable and ethical practices.

– Rheaply, a climate tech company that combines a resource-sharing network with a user-friendly asset management platform, announced that it has raised a $2.2m inter-series funding round led by Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, with additional investments made by MIT Solve’s investment arm, Solve Innovation Future.
– The investments will be directed towards building carbon-based reporting into the platform, so companies can measure carbon emissions reductions as they utilize the platform.
– Rheaply’s unique platform, Asset Exchange Manager (AxM)TM, maximizes the reuse, remanufacturing, and exchange of resources within and across organizations. The platform tracks inventory and depreciation, allowing users to better visualize, quantify, and utilize surplus assets, or to dispose of them properly.

– Sweep, a Paris, France-based platform that allows companies to mobilize their employees and external partners to reach carbon reduction targets, closed a $5M funding round.
– The round was led by New Wave, 2050 and La Famiglia with participation from San Francisco-based technology entrepreneurs.
– The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts.

– RipeLocker, a Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based ag-tech startup, raised $5m in fresh funding.
– The funding was provided by angel investors from the agriculture, technology and shipping industries.
– The company is building 500 units, with half of those going to commercial customers in the flower, hops and berry business who’ve already performed testing.
– The other half will be used in trials with new crops and customers, who will have the option to purchase the units with an ongoing user fee or simply lease the units.
– The company is led by George Lobisser, who previously co-owned and led Pace International, a post-harvest food company focusing on transportation and logistics.

– Clim8 Invest, a new U.K. startup, raised $8m in funding.
– The round was led by 7pc Ventures (early backers of Oculus, acquired by Facebook), British Business Bank Future Fund and a number of technology entrepreneurs and executives including Marcus Exall (Monese), Marcus Mosen (N26), Paul Willmott (Lego Digital, McKinsey), Doug Scott (Redbrain), Matt Wilkins (Thought Machine), Andrew Cocker (Skyscanner), Steve Thomson (Redbrain), Monica Kalia (Neyber, Goldman Sachs), Doug Monro (Adzuna) and Erik Nygard (Limejump).
– The startup will take advantage of new, higher EU rules around the disclosure requirements for sustainable investment funds.

– Ethic Inc. (“Ethic”), the tech-driven asset management platform that powers personalization for advisors, today announced that it has closed $29 million in Series B funding.
– The round was led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from existing investors including Fidelity Investments, Nyca Partners, Sound Ventures, ThirdStream Partners, Urban Innovation Fund and Kapor Capital.
– This new capital will support Ethic’s continued rapid growth, in addition to further investment in the company’s technology platform.
– The funding follows a strong period of growth for Ethic, which saw the company increase the number of assets on its platform by over 10x since its prior round of funding in 2019.

– Ecovative is a Green Island, NY-based mycelium technology company.
– The company raised $60m in Series D funding.
– The round was led by Viking Global Investors, with participation from Senator Investment Group, AiiM Partners, Trousdale Ventures and other investors.
– Steve Sherwood, Chairman of CWS Capital Partners, will be joining the company’s board.

– Utilis is a satellite-based infrastructure intelligence company.
– The company raised $6m in funding.
– The round was led by Beringea, the transatlantic venture capital firm.
– The new investment will be used to continue investing in its innovative products and expand into the ground engineering market, while adding to its team across its offices in the USA, Israel, and the UK, and growing its sales and marketing.

– Ecomedes is a San Francisco, CA-based developer of building product optimization in the cloud.
– The company completed a $3.25M seed financing round.
– The round was led by M12, with participation from NOVA by Saint-Gobain, PivotNorth, Mission Innovations Network, and AM Ventures.
– The funding will be used on collaboration tools.

– Allbirds, a shoe company, invested $2m in Natural Fiber Welding.
– The investment will see Allbirds bring a vegan leather replacement option to customers by December 2021.
– Allbirds these days is far more than a shoe company, and Natural Fiber Welding’s products include a purportedly tougher cotton fiber made using the company’s proprietary processing technology and a plant-based leather substitute.
– Those materials could find their way into Allbirds’ array of socks, shoes, t-shirts, underwear, sweaters, jackets and face masks.
– Natural Fiber Welding already touts a relationship with Porsche on its website, so Allbirds isn’t the only company that’s warmed to the Peoria, Illinois-based startup’s new materials.

– HowGood, a SaaS data platform for the food and personal care industries, has raised a $6 million investment round led by Contour Venture Partners.
– FirstMark Capital, Danone Manifesto Ventures, Trailhead Capital and others also participated.

– Rheaply raises $8M in Series A round led by High Alpha with investment from 100 Black Angels & Allies Fund, Concrete Rose Capital, Hyde Park Angels, M25, MCJ Collective, Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and Salesforce Ventures.
– Rheaply’s platform eliminates potential waste by instituting the principles of a circular economy, a model that emphasizes “designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.”
– Rheaply has helped organizations divert over 14.5 metric tons of waste and produce $1.6M in cost savings via over 5,000 transactions.