What’s funding like in the climate tech market right now?

All funding deals in the climate tech market over the last 24 months

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Climate Tech Market.

Is climate tech funding actually healthier now?

Climate tech funding is stronger for a small group of companies today, but the broader funding market has clearly weakened.

We counted $16.66 billion of funding from September 20, 2025 to September 19, 2026, up 21.8% from $13.68 billion over the previous 12 months. On the surface, that looks like a strong recovery.

The rest of the market tells a different story. Deal count fell from 400 to 322, while the number of funded companies dropped from 390 to 310. First financings fell even faster, from 117 to 80. Meanwhile, the median round barely moved, from $9.5 million to $10 million.

So today's climate tech market can support much larger financings than it did a year ago, especially for companies that have already reached scale. But fewer companies are benefiting from that capital, and the pipeline of newly funded startups has become noticeably thinner.

Metric	Current L12M	Previous 12M	Change
Total capital	$16.66B	$13.68B	+21.8%
Deals	322	400	-19.5%
Unique companies	310	390	-20.5%
First financings	80	117	-31.6%
Median round	$10.0M	$9.5M	+5.3%
Average round	$52.1M	$34.9M	+49.2%
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	$3.18B	$4.19B	-24.0%
First-financing share	24.8%	29.3%	-4.4 pp
Follow-on share	74.5%	70.0%	+4.5 pp

Is the 21.8% jump in climate tech funding mostly coming from megadeals?

Yes. Climate tech's funding growth currently depends heavily on large rounds, and the market below $50 million actually shrank.

Once we remove rounds above $50 million, capital falls from $4.19 billion in the previous period to $3.18 billion now, a 24.0% decline. Even with a much higher $100 million cutoff, funding is still down 13.2%.

The interesting part is that one giant deal is not carrying the whole market. The single largest financing represented 6.0% of current capital, compared with 11.0% previously, while the top three accounted for 18.0%, down from 23.9%.

Instead, we found a much bigger cluster of very large rounds. There were 53 financings above $50 million, up from 42, and 29 above $100 million, up from 21. Those $100 million-plus rounds absorbed 70.1% of all capital.

The headline is therefore more revealing than it first appears. Climate tech funding grew because large-scale financing became far more common among a select group of companies, while the part of the market where most startups raise money contracted.

Are fewer climate tech companies getting funded now?

Yes. Climate tech funding is reaching roughly one-fifth fewer companies than it did during the previous 12 months.

We found 310 funded companies in the latest period versus 390 before, a 20.5% decline. Deal count fell at almost the same rate, from 400 to 322.

That close relationship is useful because it rules out an easy explanation for the slowdown. We are not simply seeing the same population of companies raising less frequently. The actual funded population has become much smaller.

Twelve companies raised more than once during the current period, compared with 10 previously. That pushes the repeat-fundraising rate from 2.6% to 3.9%, but the increase is too small to explain what happened to the market overall.

Funding has also continued throughout the year, with deals in every monthly window we examined. Climate tech has plenty of financing activity as of now. There are simply fewer companies making it through the fundraising process.

Are new climate tech startups still getting funded?

New climate tech startups are still getting funded, but far fewer are getting their first institutional check.

First financings dropped from 117 to 80, a decline of about 32%. That's considerably steeper than the 19.5% fall in total deal count, which means new entrants have taken more pressure than the market as a whole.

The amount invested in first financings fell too, from $1.73 billion to $1.15 billion.

Yet investors did not slash the size of every first check. The median first financing actually increased from $3.0 million to $3.74 million.

Put together, the numbers are pretty clear. Investors are still prepared to fund a new company properly when they like it, but fewer startups are clearing that bar.

For entrepreneurs, this is probably the more important development than the 21.8% rise in total funding. A market can produce several billion-dollar financings while becoming harder to enter at the bottom.

Are existing climate tech winners taking a bigger share of the money?

Yes. Existing climate tech companies are absorbing far more capital today, even though there are fewer follow-on rounds.

We counted 240 follow-on financings, down from 280. Yet those rounds attracted $15.51 billion, compared with $11.94 billion during the previous period.

Their median size barely changed, moving from $14.55 million to $15 million. The extra money therefore comes mostly from the upper end of the follow-on market rather than from every returning company raising a much bigger round.

This fits what we see elsewhere in the data. Follow-ons now represent 74.5% of all deals, up from 70.0%, while first financings have become less common.

Investors these days appear much more willing to put hundreds of millions into companies that have already survived technical, commercial or execution risk. The number of companies getting the chance to become one of those winners has fallen.

Is the middle of the climate tech funding market getting squeezed?

Yes. The clearest weak spot in climate tech funding is currently the $20 million to $50 million range.

Small rounds have held up surprisingly well. Financings below $5 million still make up about one-third of all deals, virtually unchanged from the previous period. Deals between $5 million and $20 million slipped only modestly.

The biggest drop appears between $20 million and $50 million, where deal share fell from 21.0% to 17.4%.

At the same time, larger financings gained ground quickly. The share of $50 million to $100 million deals rose from 5.3% to 7.8%, and the $100 million-plus group increased from 6.0% to 10.2%.

We are ending up with a more polarized funding market: plenty of small rounds at one end, many more very large rounds at the other, and less activity in between.

Deal size	Current deals	Current deal share	Current capital share	Previous deal share
<$5M	107	33.2%	1.5%	33.3%
$5M–<$20M	99	30.7%	6.2%	32.5%
$20M–<$50M	56	17.4%	9.8%	21.0%
$50M–<$100M	25	7.8%	9.9%	5.3%
$100M+	33	10.2%	72.5%	6.0%
All deals with usable size data	320	99.3%	99.9%	—
Median round	—	$10.0M	—	$9.5M

Why are Series C and Series D climate tech rounds suddenly so big?

Series C and Series D+ climate tech rounds have become dramatically larger because investors are putting much more money behind the companies that make it to scale.

The median Series C financing rose from $37.5 million to $145 million. Series D+ jumped from $74.5 million to $300 million.

Those changes are enormous next to what happened earlier in the funding cycle. Seed stayed at a $3.5 million median. Series A moved from $15 million to $18.6 million, while Series B increased from $27.6 million to $30 million.

The stage mix itself changed much less dramatically. Early-stage deals fell from 61.5% to 58.4% of the market, while later-stage share barely moved.

Company age also gives us an important check on the story. The median funded company was four years old in both periods. Median ages at Seed, Series A and Series B remained roughly two, four and six years respectively.

Investors have not simply decided to fund much older climate tech companies. The real change is the amount of money available once a company reaches a convincing scale stage.

Which part of climate tech is attracting the most money right now?

Clean Energy Systems is currently the strongest part of climate tech funding by a wide margin.

We counted 146 Clean Energy Systems deals, down from 168, but the category still gained share because the rest of the market contracted faster. It now represents 45.3% of all deals, versus 42.0% previously.

The bigger move is in capital. Clean Energy Systems jumped from 55.4% to 77.2% of all climate tech funding. Its median financing also rose from $11.7 million to $15 million.

That gives the category a stronger foundation than a simple megadeal story. Billion-dollar rounds obviously inflate the capital total, but the typical Clean Energy financing has strengthened as well.

Several of the biggest transactions we found sit in this category, including billion-dollar rounds for Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Valar Atomics, two separate $1 billion financings for Base Power, $750 million for Form Energy and roughly $700 million for X-energy.

Other climate categories look much less convincing today. Industrial Climate Tech lost capital share, Building Decarbonization weakened, and Carbon Removal contracted sharply. Low Carbon Mobility raised larger typical rounds but lost a large amount of capital share.

Category	Deals now / before	Deal-share change	Capital share now / before	Median now / before
Clean Energy Systems	146 / 168	+3.3 pp	77.2% / 55.4%	$15.0M / $11.7M
Industrial Climate Tech	62 / 79	-0.5 pp	5.0% / 8.6%	$7.3M / $6.5M
Low Carbon Mobility	48 / 57	+0.7 pp	12.8% / 20.8%	$14.8M / $10.0M
Building Decarbonization	36 / 47	-0.6 pp	2.1% / 6.2%	$5.35M / $6.3M
Climate Adaptation	16 / 15	+1.2 pp	2.0% / 1.7%	$9.75M / $9.0M
Carbon Removal	14 / 34	-4.2 pp	0.9% / 7.2%	$5.7M / $11.6M
Entire climate tech market	322 / 400	—	100% / 100%	$10.0M / $9.5M

Is carbon removal funding in trouble right now?

Carbon removal funding is going through a real retrenchment right now, with fewer deals, much less capital and smaller rounds all pointing in the same direction.

We found only 14 Carbon Removal financings during the latest period, down from 34. Its share of climate tech capital dropped from 7.2% to 0.9%, while the median round fell from $11.6 million to $5.7 million.

Here the weakness goes deeper than one missing megadeal. Deal count, deal share, capital share and typical financing size all deteriorated.

The broader carbon-removal market has been moving in the same direction. CDR.fyi's 2026 investment review found that private investment in durable carbon removal peaked in 2023 and then contracted in both 2024 and 2025. It also found that the number of active investors fell in 2025 and highlighted a persistent financing gap between early-stage development and larger-scale deployment.

There is still serious demand for carbon removal. Frontier announced another $915 million of purchase commitments this year, taking its total commitment to $1.8 billion. Buyers have not disappeared; financing companies through the long and expensive path toward large-scale delivery remains the harder part.

For now, Carbon Removal looks more like a market being forced through a tougher commercialization filter than a category that has simply lost relevance.

Why is so much climate tech money moving into energy?

Energy is dominating climate tech funding because power demand, grid constraints and commercialization milestones are giving investors concrete reasons to write very large checks.

Fusion is the clearest example. The Fusion Industry Association reported that fusion companies raised a record $4.48 billion in the 12 months leading to July 2026, up 69% from the previous year's survey total. Commonwealth Fusion Systems subsequently announced another $1 billion equity financing, while Valar Atomics closed a $1 billion Series B.

The technology is also producing more tangible milestones. The U.S. Department of Energy finalized a Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap built around commercial deployment in the 2030s. Valar Atomics' Ward 250 then achieved zero-power criticality under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, giving investors something much more concrete to evaluate than a distant technology roadmap.

Storage has a similarly strong real-world backdrop. The International Energy Agency says 108 GW of battery-storage capacity was added globally in 2025, 40% more than in 2024. Form Energy's $750 million financing is going directly toward manufacturing and commercial deployment of its multi-day storage systems.

At the same time, electricity demand from data centers rose 17% in 2025, according to the IEA, and more than 2,500 GW of generation, storage and large-load projects are now stuck in grid connection queues worldwide. That creates a straightforward commercial opportunity for technologies that can add generation, storage or flexibility quickly.

Today's biggest climate rounds increasingly look like infrastructure-scale financings. Investors can connect the technology to a visible problem, a customer need and, in several cases, a concrete route toward deployment.

Is the U.S. pulling away from Europe in climate tech funding?

The U.S. is pulling away in climate tech capital intensity, while Europe is losing funding breadth and Asia-Pacific is quietly gaining deals.

North America accounted for 69.4% of the capital we tracked, up from 57.9%, even though its deal share fell from 34.5% to 31.7%. Its median round rose from $13.6 million to $20.5 million.

The U.S. alone produced roughly 95 deals versus 125 previously, yet those financings generated about $11.46 billion compared with $7.78 billion before. American climate tech is currently producing fewer transactions and much bigger winners.

Europe moved the other way. Its deal share fell from 51.5% to 44.7%, while capital share dropped from 25.8% to 15.8%. Its median financing actually increased slightly, so smaller individual rounds are not the main issue.

That pattern also shows up outside our own research. Cleantech for Europe reported €4.9 billion of EU venture and growth investment in the first half of 2026, 8% more than a year earlier, while deal count fell 42% to 165. The resemblance is hard to miss: headline capital can hold up even while far fewer companies raise.

Asia-Pacific is moving in another direction. Its share of deals jumped from 11.8% to 20.2%, helped by India rising from 22 to 35 financings. Capital share still slipped, though, and the median round remains far below North America's.

Region	Deal share now	Deal share before	Capital share now	Capital share before
North America	31.7%	34.5%	69.4%	57.9%
Europe	44.7%	51.5%	15.8%	25.8%
Asia-Pacific	20.2%	11.8%	11.9%	15.5%
Africa	1.6%	1.0%	1.2%	0.3%
Middle East	1.2%	0.5%	1.7%	0.1%
Latin America	0.6%	0.8%	0.1%	0.3%
United States alone	~95 deals	~125 deals	~$11.46B	~$7.78B

Are climate tech investors getting more selective?

Climate tech investors look more selective today: fewer companies are raising, fewer investors are showing up repeatedly, and the biggest checks are clustering around companies with a clear path to scale.

We identified 415 unique disclosed investors during the latest period, down from 497. The number appearing in more than one financing dropped from 107 to 72, while the share of participation coming from repeat investors fell from 38.5% to 31.4%.

Investor disclosure was slightly lower in the current period, so we would not interpret every missing name as an investor that has left climate tech. The drop is still too large to support the idea that this funding boom is being driven by a dramatically broader investor base.

Corporate capital has not flooded the market either. Strategic investors participated in 33.2% of classifiable deals, compared with 36.3% previously.

What has changed is where some of that strategic money shows up. The median strategic-backed round rose from $15 million to $17.4 million, and we see companies such as Qantas, Airbus, Idemitsu Kosan, NVIDIA, GE Vernova, RWE, Google, ABB and Centrica around current financings.

CFS gives us a useful example of why industrial participation can matter at this stage. Alongside its funding, the company has announced commercial relationships with major power buyers, including a power purchase agreement with Eni worth more than $1 billion. X-energy's current project pipeline includes partnerships with Dow, Amazon and Centrica.

Investors appear to be paying most for companies that can show how very large amounts of capital turn into plants, factories, contracted power or infrastructure rather than another development cycle.

Is climate tech funding getting more erratic month to month?

Climate tech funding has become much more uneven from month to month, even though companies are still raising throughout the year.

The median monthly deal count fell from 34.5 to 23.5, but median monthly capital climbed from $914 million to $1.34 billion.

One rolling monthly window alone, from July 20 to August 19, generated about $5.18 billion. That is roughly 31% of all the capital raised during the current 12-month period. The previous period's strongest month reached only $2.36 billion.

We found no zero-deal months in either period. There has been a continuous flow of fundraising, which is useful to keep in mind: the market has not frozen between megadeals.

The rhythm has still changed a lot. A normal month now contains fewer financings, while a handful of periods containing multiple giant rounds can suddenly push aggregate capital several billion dollars higher.

Quarterly climate tech funding headlines are now unusually sensitive to the exact closing dates of a few large transactions.

Do climate tech startups need more proof to raise money now?

Climate tech investors seem to be rewarding proof and scale more aggressively today, although the available evidence does not let us claim that every startup now faces a formally higher milestone bar.

Several pieces fit that interpretation. First financings have dropped by about one-third. Series C and Series D+ checks have become much larger. Follow-ons absorb the overwhelming majority of capital. Investor breadth has also narrowed.

The companies receiving some of the largest checks give the pattern a tangible form. Valar Atomics announced its $1 billion Series B after reaching reactor criticality. CFS is assembling SPARC while developing a commercial ARC plant and signing power purchase agreements. Form Energy is using its new capital to expand an operating U.S. factory and accelerate commercial deployments. X-energy is financing supply-chain expansion around an 11 GW order book.

Those examples suggest that investors currently place a high value on technical validation, manufacturing capability, customer commitments and a believable route to deployment.

We should still stop short of turning that pattern into a fake quantitative milestone trend. Our research does not provide normalized milestone or use-of-funds fields for every financing, and previous-round dates and sizes are not complete enough to calculate funding velocity reliably.

We can see where the biggest checks are going, but we cannot honestly say that climate tech companies overall are returning to market faster, achieving larger round-to-round step-ups or being required to hit one specific milestone before raising.

What really changed over the last 12 months?

Climate tech has become a better funding market for proven scale-stage companies and a harder one for everyone trying to join that group. Total capital rose 21.8%, yet the number of funded companies fell by about one-fifth and first financings fell by almost one-third.

The megadeal market is now large enough to change the meaning of the headline funding number. Rounds above $100 million represent only a small fraction of transactions but absorb most of the money. Once we look below $50 million, capital is down 24%.

The market has also become more polarized. Small rounds remain common, later-stage checks have exploded, and the $20 million to $50 million middle has thinned. The path from an early financing to large-scale funding looks narrower than the aggregate dollar total suggests.

Clean Energy Systems has emerged as the main center of gravity. The category gained deal share, capital share and median round size at the same time, while fusion, nuclear and storage companies produced several of the period's largest financings. Carbon Removal moved sharply in the opposite direction.

Geography now tells two very different stories. North America is deploying much more capital without funding more deals, Europe is losing breadth and capital share, and Asia-Pacific is producing many more transactions at comparatively smaller check sizes.

Overall, climate tech looks more mature today, but also more selective and more concentrated. The misleading headline would be that climate tech funding rose 21.8% and therefore the whole market recovered. A more accurate reading is that enormous pools of capital are available to companies that investors believe can scale, while the broader funded pipeline has become smaller.