The year 2023 has seen the quick growth of many promising green startups. From vegan cheese manufacturing and feeding cows seaweed to reduce methane to using AI to ask trees how they feel and solar panel recycling, sustainability startups in 2023 appear to have covered more fields than ever before.
We are starting to see sustainability startups soar in terms of funding, and green businesses seem to have started to receive financial the backing they deserve.
So, here are our top five startups of 2023 in terms of funding — with a twist: the “business-as-usual” startups versus the sustainable.
5 – Linktree & Pure Harvest Smart Farms
At number five, startup Linktree, founded in 2016, helps content creators and influencers to share all of their content from multiple platforms on one display screen, enabling consumers to quickly subscribe to their work on various platforms.
The fifth sustainability startup of 2023, alongside the “business-as-usual” Linktree, is Abu Dhabi-based Pure Harvest Smart Farms, which uses technology to ensure the sustainable, year-round manufacturing of fruits and vegetables.
Linktree’s Series C round of funding had brought in $165.7 million as of March 2022. Pure Harvest Smart Farms has accrued $334.4 million from nine investors since its founding in 2016.
4 – StackBlitz & Heliogen
In fourth place, Californian startup StackBlitz has been providing computer programmers with all of their required tools on one platform since 2018, including source code editors and debugging.
The fourth among sustainability startups is Heliogen, also from California, founded in 2013. This startup uses AI-powered solar technology to provide almost entirely carbon-free energy. StackBlitz brought in $7.9 million in seed funding from its first and only round of funding.
Once again, the sustainable startup, Heliogen, outdid the business-as-usual Stackblitz in terms of funding received, securing $332.6 million from 32 investors throughout 12 rounds of funding since 2013. This is of course hard to compare with Stackblitz’s statistics, given that the startup has only undergone one round of funding so far.
3 – OnlyFans & Aurora Solar
Third on the list is OnlyFans, a platform for NSFW (Not Safe For Work) content founded in 2016, alongside Aurora Solar, a Californian startup that designs and delivers customised solar energy plans to clients founded in 2013.
OnlyFans’ funding is undisclosed due to the nature of the company, but we know that its net revenues reached $2.5 billion in 2022 and that it’s one of the fastest-growing businesses globally.
While we can’t compare funding in this instance, Aurora Solar’s $537M million raised since 2013 through six rounds of funding and one grant prize is surely impressive.
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2 – Cradlewise & Grove Collaborative
At number two, Californian startup Cradlewise, founded in 2018, sells cribs with smart, in-built baby monitors. San Franciscan company Grove Collaborative, on the other hand, was founded in 2012 and evaluates the sustainability of products before advertising them on their website, offering over 200 sustainable-certified brands for their customers to choose from.
Cradlewise’s funding pales in comparison to Grove Collaborative. Where Cradlewise received $7 million in funding over three rounds since its founding in 2018, Grove Collaborative has received a total of $606.5 million in funding from 34 investors since 2012.
1 – ZeroTier & Commonwealth Fusion
Finally, the two number one startups of 2023 in terms of funding respectively are Los Angeles-based company ZeroTier, and sustainable startup Commonwealth Fusion.
ZeroTier was founded in 2015 and allows its clients to build and maintain encrypted peer-to-peer networks. It currently boasts over three million connected devices in over 220 countries and territories.
Its sustainable counterpart is Commonwealth Fusion – a 2018-founded Massachusetts startup collaborating with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to pioneer the ground-breaking use of magnets to create clean and low-priced energy sources.
While both startups sit at number one in our rankings, their figures differ hugely.
ZeroTier has received around $3.7 million in funding across three rounds since 2018. Commonwealth Fusion’s staggering $2 billion in funding, accrued over 5 rounds since 2018, soars high above ZeroTiers’s.
So, where all “business-as-usual” and sustainable startups cited here have received impressive amounts of funding and are growing quickly, green startups appear to be getting more funding than their “business-as-usual” counterparts.
This data alone certainly isn’t enough to make a prediction for 2024 – we can only hope that investors will continue this trajectory by backing sustainable initiatives and funding green startups.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Featured Photo: Greenhouse filled with green. Featured Photo Credit: Photo by Paula Prekopova on Unsplash.
