List of the 300 largest Cleantech Venture Capital Investors [2024]

List of 5 large Cleantech Venture Capital Investors

Clean technology, or in short cleantech, describes processes, products, and services that aim to counteract climate change and reduce the negative environmental impacts by making energy efficient improvements, using sustainable resources, or implementing other modern solutions. This article highlights five interesting cleantech venture capital investors from our curated cleantech VC list.

1. DCVC (USA)

DCVC (Data Collective Venture Capital) focuses on deep tech, including artificial intelligence, genomics, and robotics, DCVC has invested in companies in the cleantech sector. An interesting portfolio company is Modern Electron.  Modern Electron aims to replace traditional steam turbines with advanced solid-state thermionic converters, which turn heat directly into electricity. This leads to reduced carbon emissions and a more sustainable energy infrastructure.

Update 2024: In 2024, DCVC Bio co-led a $52.5 million Series A investment round in Radionetics. Radionetics, a radiology company, is making a name for itself with its innovative cancer treatment approach.

2. BDC Venture Capital (Canada)

BDC Capital Ventures, a firm based in Canada, targets innovative companies across various sectors. The company has made significant investments in the cleantech sector, backing companies that are driving positive environmental impact. A portfolio company backed by their funds is CarbonCure Technologies. Based in Nova Scotia, Canada, CarbonCure optimizes carbon capture and utilization technology.. Their solution injects recycled carbon dioxide (CO2) into concrete, not only reducing the carbon footprint of the construction industry but also improving the quality and strength of the concrete itself.

3. East Ventures (Singapore)

East Ventures is a venture capital firm that has been actively investing in and supporting startups in Southeast Asia since its inception in 2010. With a strong focus on technology and innovation, East Ventures has invested in the cleantech sector, backing companies that are driving sustainable solutions to address environmental challenges. One of these companies is Waste4Change, an Indonesian startup that targets waste management practices by providing efficient and sustainable waste collection, recycling, and education services. Another cleantech portfolio company backed by East Ventures is Sampingan, a platform that connects businesses with freelancers and, therefore, facilitating remote work and reducing the need for physical office spaces.

4. Capricorn Partners (Belgium)

Capricorn Partners is a venture capital fund that focuses on innovative companies using technology as a competitive advantage. They concentrate on digital, health, and clean technologies that have a positive impact on the world. The company consist of 25 experts in 4 different sectors and they have €610M across 10 funds under management. One of the portfolio companies is Nabaltec, who make environmentally friendly chemicals.

5. SFJ Ventures (USA)

SFJ Ventures is interested in high-growth companies who want to improve the future by focusing on developing healthier, smarter, and cleaner options. The company has over two decades of experience and 81 portfolio companies. Through their investment in these start-ups SFJ Ventures has managed to mitigate over 3 million metric tons of CO2. One of the cleantech companies they invested in is Ambient Fuels, a company that builds facilities to deliver sufficient and cost-competitive clean fuel.

Reasons why cleantech will be the next big thing

Most venture capital funds are still focused on topics related to software and the internet. This is due, in particular, to the history of the VC world and the fact that the last two decades have been characterized by very great advances in the digitization environment. Now, however, the topic of sustainability is dominating more and more debates and occupying a particularly important position for both companies and governments around the world. Efficiency gains are needed to make renewable energy and other means of combating climate change even more viable on a mass scale. For this reason, many observers believe that even more startups will emerge in this field. Cleantech is  the next big thing, and more and more early-stage investors share this point of view.

Picture Source: Noah Buscher

Included information in our list

Our keyword analysis-based list include the following general columns:

• Name of the VC fund
• Country of origin
• URL
• E-mail (general)
• Investment focus (if data available)
• Corporate VC (yes/no)

The following columns are based on the keyword crawler, which is a Python-based, in-house developed tool that crawls every page for at least 45 seconds to find the respective keywords.

• total_frequency (e.g.: 263) – total counted occurrences of keywords on the VC website
• average_keyword_rate (e.g. 0.02) – average rate of keyword occurrences per subpage in relation with total number of words
• most_common_keyword (e.g. „cleantech“) – keyword that was counted the most often on respective VC website
• most_common_keyword_frequency (e.g. 406) – number of times the most common keyword was counted
• sub_url_highest_rate (e.g. https://capricorn.be/en/channels/quest-cleantech/portfolio) – sub url with the highest number of found keywords
• highest_rate (e.g. 0.13) – highest keyword rate per subpage
• frequency_per_keyword: {‘cleantech’: 406, ‘greentech’: 0, ‘climatetech’: 0} – dictionary of number of keyword occurrences per keyword

Picture Source: Anders J