Stanford Climate Ventures: 8 years, 52 companies, $1.13B raised, 779 employees across 22 US states and 19 countries. Supported launch of 2 new Climate Ventures courses in Singapore and Germany.
My colleagues Joel Moxley, Jane Woodward, David McColl, and I are Adjunct Professors at Stanford University. We are now in our 9th year of teaching Stanford Climate Ventures (SCV), Stanford’s climate-tech entrepreneurship class focused on nurturing and growing the university’s climate-tech company-building ecosystem. Last quarter was amazingly the 25th quarter that we’ve taught the course!
The class runs in two main modes. Every Fall, we run the “Big Ideas in White Space in Climate-Tech Entrepreneurship” seminar where we bring in global climate-tech experts to help point the Stanford climate-tech entrepreneurship community to some of the high-impact areas where there aren’t very many startups today (i.e. “white spaces”). During the Winter and Spring quarters we enter our “project based” mode, where each quarter ~6 interdisciplinary teams come together to research, analyze, and develop detailed launch plans for high-impact, climate-tech start-ups.
Through SCV, we want to build a strong and accessible climate-tech entrepreneurship community across the whole Stanford campus and to teach multi-disciplinary teams of students how to successfully identify, assess, design, launch, and build high-impact new climate tech startups.
Global Collaboration: New Climate Ventures Courses in Singapore and Germany
2024 was a particularly exciting year in that we at SCV had the opportunity, with strong coordination and sponsorship from the team at Breakthrough Energy Fellows, to support the launch of two new “University Climate Ventures” classes around the world, including Singapore Climate Ventures with our friends and partners at National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Temasek, and Enterprise Singapore and TUM Climate Ventures with our friends and partners at Technical University of Munich. We were super impressed with the quality and success of these University Climate Ventures classes in their first year and are excited to collaborate with them in the years ahead as they continue to grow and evolve.
If you want to create a University Climate Ventures course at your university, reach out to us and we would be happy to help! Just reach out to David Danielson
We are especially grateful to Ashley Grosh and the Breakthrough Energy Fellows team for coordinating and supporting these University Climate Ventures efforts!
We recently completed our 2024 SCV Impact Assessment and we’re pleased to share the results:
● 52 companies from 103 projects — 7 more newcos over the past year
● $1.129B total follow on funding ($977M private, $152M non-dilutive) — $404M additional funding just over the last year
● 779 employees, across 24 states, 19 countries, 5 continents — 111 additional employees and 5 more countries compared to the last year (US States include: CA, CO, DC, FL, ID, IL, MA, MD, MI, MO, MT, NC, NM, NV, NY, PA, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WY, Puerto Rico; Countries include: Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Denmark, France, French Polynesia, Germany, India, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States)
Below are some of the many exciting companies and entrepreneurs that have come out of the course to date.
SCV 2024 newcos…
● Alta Resource Technologies (new) — customized proteins for critical mineral separations (Nathan Ratledge, PhD)
● Circularity Fuels (new) — fuels from carbon dioxide in the air (Steven Beaton, MBA)
● EarthflowAI (new) — AI-enabled subsurface modeling & simulation (Catherine Callas, PhD)
● Hydrify (new) — next generation geologic hydrogen (Yashee Mathur, PhD)
● Mizu (new) — AI-powered water risk analytics for insurance for agriculture (Tomo Kumahira, MS/MBA; Ryo Takahashi, MS/MBA)
● Mobius Solutions (new) — circular economy (Amy Zhou, MS; Elena Wagenmans, MS)
● Nasadya (new) — stationary solid-state hydrogen storage
Some other highlighted SCV companies…
● Fervo Energy — scaling geothermal through the application of horizontal drilling (Tim Latimer, MS/MBA)
● Mitra Chem — building a North American battery materials champion (Vivas Kumar, MBA; Prof. Will Cheuh)
● Brimstone Energy — scalable low-GHG production of Ordinary Portland Cement (Cody Finke, PhD@Caltech; Hugo Leandri, MS@Caltech) — spun out of Caltech
● Zanskar — predictive platform informed by massive data for discovering unknown geothermal resources (Carl Hoiland, PhD; Joel Edwards, PhD@UCSF)
● Guidewheel — plug-and-play FactoryOps platform empowering any factory to reach sustainable peak performance (Lauren Dunford, MBA)
● Swift Solar — high efficiency tandem perovskite solar modules (Tomas Leitjens, PhD; Kevin Bush, PhD)
● Sublime Systems — electrifying and decarbonizing cement production (Leah Ellis, PhD@MIT) — spun out of MIT
● Nitricity — production of zero-GHG fertilizer from solar, air, and water (Nico Pinkowski, Josh McEnaney, Jay Schwalbe — PhD’s)
● ClimateAI — climate intelligence for resilience in the agriculture sector (Himanshu Gupta, MS/MBA)
● Resonant Link — disruptively superior wireless charging solution (Grayson Zulauf, PhD)
● EvolOH — AEM-based electrolyzer systems (Jimmy Rojas, PhD)
● Tynt Technologies — advanced smart window technology based on reversible metal electrodeposition (RME) (Prof. Mike McGehee, now at CU Boulder)
● Verne — cryo-compression hydrogen storage technology for heavy duty transportation (Ted McKlveen, MBA; Bav Roy, MBA; David Jaramillo (UC Berkeley PhD))
● Conduit — HVAC load calculation, design, and sales software (Marisa Reddy, MBA; Shelby Breger, MBA)
● Resource Chemical Corporation — low-GHG high-performance plastics from CO2 and inedible biomass (Aanindeeta Banerjee, PhD)
Additional exciting SCV companies…
● Aionics — AI-driven materials design and discovery acceleration (Austin Sendek, PhD)
● Ammobia — fueling decarbonization by revolutionizing green ammonia production (Karen Baert, MBA; Tristan Gilbert, PhD)
● Cambio — sustainability compliance and retrofits made easy (Stephanie Grayson, MBA/MS)
● Electroflow Technologies — Lithium extraction from geothermal brine (Eric McShane, Evan Gardner — PhD’s)
● Expand Power — Creating domestically manufacturable transformers to modernize the grid (Carla Pinzon, PhD)
● Focal — personalized electrified heating (Raj Tilwa, MBA)
● Feon Energy — novel electrolyte molecules for lithium batteries (Wenxiao Huang, Postdoc; Zhiao Yu, PhD)
● General Galactic — CO2 to methane and other fuels (Halen Mattison, MS)
● GridKit — simplified EV charger maintenance (Jeremy Pathmanabhan, MBA)
● High Tide Intelligence — coastal flood risk analytics & intelligence (Adrian Santiago Tate, MS)
● Holocene — next generation direct air capture technology (Anca Timofte, MBA)
● Huminly — using enzymes to recycle textile waste (Nikita Khlystov, PhD)
● Inlyte Energy — next generation iron-sodium battery (Antonio Baclig, PhD)
● Lasso — software platform to reduce emissions from the cattle sector (Nicole Rojas, MBA)
● Marain — the energetic mind for automated mobility (Damien Scott, MS) (acquired by General Motors in 2022)
● Modelyst — scientific data engineering-as-a-service & catalyst discovery services (Brian Rohr, PhD)
● NitroVolt — decentralized and sustainable ammonia production (Suzanne Zamany Andersen, PhD) — spun out of DTU
● PHNX Materials — converting landfilled coal ash into sustainable products (Krish Mehta, MBA/MS)
● Raya Power — the first residential solar system designed to be accessible by everyone (Meghan Wood, MBA/MS)
● Renewell Energy — grid storage using re-purposed oil & gas infrastructure (Kemp Gregory, MS; Stefan Streckfus, MS)
● RIZM — combining data from production, energy procurement and infrastructure to enable holistic optimization of energy systems, procurement, operation, and production decisions with the help of algorithms (Lucas Elias Kuepper, Visiting Research Scientist)
● RockFix — unlocking value in mine waste (Gus Marques, MBA/MS)
● Source Climate Solutions — Energy efficiency and renewable energy retrofit platform delivering end-to-end cost-effective energy upgrades for K-12, multifamily, and office buildings (Blake Dressel, MS)
● Sunkara — redefining the economics of rooftop solar decomissioning and upgrades (Fred Addy, MBA)
● Tau Carbon — long-term sequestration of carbon in wood (John Lin, PhD)
● Working Trees — enabling carbon credits and project development for silvopasture (planting trees on pasture land) (John Foye, MBA/MS)
● XFlow Energy — modular vertical-axis wind turbine solution (Ian Brownstein, PhD)
Gratitude…
Joel, Jane, David, and I, and the whole Stanford climate-tech community owe an immense debt of gratitude to Tom and Johanna Baruch, the exceptional original patrons of this important class and emerging ecosystem. Tom is a legendary “hard-tech” venture capitalist who has committed his formidable talents and experience exclusively to the climate challenge through the creation of Baruch Future Ventures. Most importantly, he is also a dearly beloved friend and mentor.
Our class would also not be possible without the generous support of Breakthrough Energy Fellows and the Stanford Ecopreneurship program and we specifically want to thank Ashley Grosh and Keegan Cooke for helping us build out the infrastructure of the class.
We also want to extend our deepest appreciation to the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability (Arun Majumdar, Yi Cui), the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy (Will Cheuh), and the Stanford Energy Science and Engineering Department (Hamdi Chelepi) for their unwavering and continued personal and professional support over the years.
And finally we want to thank our amazing SCV TA’s (Bharti Singhla, Aline Paul Schechter), long-time SCV Mentors (Brock Mansfield, Mayank Girdhar, Sila Kiliccote, Jessy Rivest, Clea Kolster) and long-time Feedback Judges (Chris Rivest, Dipender Saluja) for their generosity, passion, and excellence.
Onward and upward the 9th year of Stanford Climate Ventures!
All my best,
David Danielson (on behalf of the whole SCV team)
