Raising growth capital for your climate startup in 2025

As we head into the peak fall fundraising season for VC-backed startups, Wireframe often does an informal poll of our co-investors to understand what they’re looking to fund, how metrics and benchmarks have changed, and what startups should expect through a raise process.

Given some of the macro shifts hitting climate tech markets this year, we decided to formalize this practice - polling dozens of investors representing firms with more than $20B in AUM. The full results of our 2025 Climate Investor Survey can be found in this report.

At this year’s NYC Climate Week, we joined our friends at B Capital and HSBC for a panel discussion to debrief on these findings and get tactical on how the best climate startups can adapt to this changing market environment. We discussed how deal volume across industries is down, that growth rounds are taking longer to raise, and that climate investors are laser-focused on backing businesses that thrive without subsidies.

In a wide-ranging conversation, panelists surfaced 3 key things they’re looking for companies to demonstrate at the growth stage: storytelling, strong unit economics, and demonstrated repeatability. Read on to hear the panel's insights.
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Jeff Johnson at B Capital was first to point out the difference he sees in storytelling orientation between climate founders and generalist tech and AI teams. He urged founders to focus on driving maximum attention to their businesses and how they can change the world in phenomenal ways rather than overindexing on the details of the technology in a pitch:

As a community, we have to figure out how to convey to the world what we’re doing and why this can have a massive impact - fast - in order to attract the right people and capital.

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Martin Richards at HSBC doubled down on narrative as a differentiator, but called out that different audiences require different stories. Founders should adapt their strategy depending on the regulatory, market and business model considerations of the groups they’re selling into. For example, VCs will focus on an entirely different set of criteria than project finance groups.

Our own Paul Straub also called out that a successful process can often be as much about the audience you’ve selected as it is about your story and pitch:

You’d be surprised how many founders don’t know which firms can lead their rounds, and end up not knowing if they’re even spending time with the right people.

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He recommended taking the time to start conservations early and really refine the profile of investors who founders decide to pitch, just as they would in any other enterprise sales process. They should seek to understand a VC’s business model and what they’re looking for in an investment, to help ensure they run the most efficient raise process possible.

All panelists noted the shift away from an environment in the US – supported by the Inflation Reduction Act – where there was tolerance of a green premium.

While Martin spoke to the supportive regulatory framework in Europe, he stressed that even with policies like CBAM, novel technologies need to be able to compete with incumbent technologies.

Jeff cautioned founders to recognize early whether they were selling “vitamins not pain killers” and to adjust their story and business model to deliver real and necessary ROI for customers.

Across stages, panelists said they needed to see a path to price parity with existing technologies, and high margin business models. This is aligned with broader market feedback we got from survey respondents, highlighting that unit economics and market size were most critical in new deal assessment.

From a growth stage and project finance perspective, Jeff and Martin both emphasized the value of evidence that a project or sale was repeatable.

Touching on HSBC’s work with Electric Hydrogen and Infinium, including on Infinium’s Project Road Runner, Martin spoke to the value of having a clear deployment strategy:

It’s great to have new technologies, but we’re going to have to get a lot of deployment out there. And unlike SaaS you need to build it 200 times, not just once.

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Companies can best prepare to raise later-stage equity or debt by having a clear story on unit economics and an explanation for how their early results are repeatable across new sites and customers.

For more details, you can read our full Climate Investor Survey report.

At Wireframe Ventures, we back builders at the earliest stages and support them through future fundraising and deployment. If you have a clear vision to build better, faster, cheaper solutions for energy and industrial transformation, and you’re just getting started on your journey — we'd love to hear from you!