Just over a year ago, we were wondering whether we would be able to attract a group of outstanding minds to our first German Venture Builder programme, away from our Cambridge home.

A short time later, we were faced with the difficult choice of selecting 75 founders from over 800 applications. From this group, 21 teams emerged. And, once again, we were faced with a difficult decision.

In the end, we invested in 6 teams, whose potential to cut CO2e emissions by at least 10m tonnes, and scale that impact, impressed us the most.

The Climate Innovation Showcase Day marked the last day of the first German Venture Builder Programme and it was very important to us to provide the 6 teams with a ceremonial setting for their final pitches. We would like to thank Google for supporting us with the ideal setting at the Berlin headquarters.

We are very proud of what the teams have achieved in such a short amount of time and are very excited about the milestones to come. Their names will remain closely associated with the launch of our German venture builder.

The six invested ventures from the Carbon13 Venture Builder Programme Germany:

Fungtional.bio
A digital nutrition coach for microbes that accelerates the transition to a circular bioeconomy 

VoltVogel
Flexible and scalable EV charging service powered by sustainable batteries 

Climalyst
Developing low-energy carbon dioxide capture and permanent storage solutions 

Point2Hectare
Unlocking the full potential of biochar for soil and fertilizer improvement 

Hoop Solar
Unlocking gigawatts of solar energy on plastic greenhouses 

Mardeca 
Reducing maritime carbon with de-risked vessel retrofits

Another highlight of the Showcase Day was the keynote speech by Lubomila Jordanova on “The role of ClimateTech in driving the global economic transformation.” Lubomila made clear that “climate data science should be at the core of decision making when building companies that are future proof. With this in mind, the focus of Carbon 13 on companies that have a deep tech and also analytical scientific perspective is one that would build scalable businesses that are allowing themselves to embed their value proposition in the economy.”​

We would like to thank all participants and supporters. Without them, the teams would not be where they are now.