Accelerate Productivity in 2025
Reignite Growth Despite the Global Slowdown
Energy transition startups are underpinning a pivotal economic shift as global investment topped USD 2.1 trillion in 2024, up 11% year‑on‑year, and is projected to exceed USD 3.3 trillion in 2025. With clean energy deployments, battery storage, carbon capture, hydrogen, nuclear, and grid resilience front and center, VC funding has also surged. Clean energy startups saw capital grow from USD 1.9 billion in 2019 to over USD 12.3 billion by 2022, even amid broader market slowdowns.
Leading innovators, like Exowatt (USD 90 million raised for modular thermal storage) and Last Energy (micro‑modular nuclear reactors, USD 64 million funding), deliver high‑impact, ROI‑driven solutions. For energy companies, investors, and policy strategists, monitoring emerging startups offers visibility into scalable, profitable technologies driving decarbonization, reliability, and energy security in the next wave of the energy transition.
Global Startup Heat Map highlights 10 Energy Transition Startups & Companies to Watch
Through the Big Data & Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, covering over 7M+ startups, 20K+ technology trends, plus 150M+ patents, news articles & market reports, we identified 10 320 energy transition startups.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights the 10 energy transition solutions you should watch in 2025 as well as the geo-distribution of 10 320 startups & scaleups we analyzed for this research.
According to our data, we observe high startup activity in the US and India, followed by the UK and Germany. The top 5 Startup Hubs for Energy Transition Solutions are London, New York City, Bangalore, Houston, and Singapore.
Discover Emerging Energy Transition Startups to Watch in 2025
We hand-picked startups to showcase in this report by filtering for their technology, founding year, location, funding, and other metrics.
These energy transition startups and companies work on solutions ranging from artificial intelligence (AI)-powered analysis and legaltech to virtual power plants (VPP) and space-based solar energy generation.
- Halcyon – AI-based Energy Transition Analysis
- Powernaut – Virtual Power Plant
- TerraThermo – Geothermal Energy Production
- Sun Water Fire – Residential Energy Autonomy
- zerio – Legaltech for Energy Transition
- CGEN Engineering – Wind, Wave, and Tidal Energy Transition
- GreenCarbonFactory – Energy Transition Localization
- Aetherflux – Space-based Solar Energy Generation
- Bactery – Clean Electricity Generation
- Halide Energy – Copper-based Batteries
1. Halcyon
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: San Francisco, California, USA
- Use For: AI-based Energy Transition Analysis
- Funding: Secured USD 100 million in a Series C funding led by Evolution Equity Partners
US-based startup Halcyon offers an AI-assisted platform to facilitate decision-making in the energy transition sector. It features a search infrastructure and knowledge graphs, with customizable filters and tags that lead to relevant information.
The platform provides real-time information aggregated from governments, utilities, and corporations, with verifiable sources. This allows users to verify the accuracy of the generated information. Further, the platform features a natural language interface for users to interact with and interrogate data easily.
This user-friendly approach enables energy professionals to research efficiently and make informed business decisions.
2. Powernaut
- Founding Year: 2024
- Location: Ghent, Belgium
- Use For: Virtual Power Plant
- Funding: Secured EUR 2.4 million in Pre-Seed funding
Belgian startup Powernaut provides a virtual power plant to substitute large power stations. The VPP aggregates decentralized energy resources (DERs) like batteries, electric vehicle (EV) chargers, heat pumps, and solar panels into one platform via cloud and local connections.
It coordinates energy consumption and production across the DERs to balance demand fluctuations in real time. This allows users to unify their energy portfolio, balance supply and demand, and improve flexibility without undermining grid stability.
3. TerraThermo
- Founding Year: 2024
- Location: Dublin, Ireland
- Use For: Geothermal Energy Production
Irish startup TerraThermo builds geothermal power projects using hot dry rock (HDR) technology. It harnesses hard, dry rocks underground, warmed by heat flowing from beneath the Earth’s crust. It maps this heat flow distribution to determine temperature anomalies and explore HDR geothermal resources.
The startup’s method accesses the Earth’s heat without relying on natural water reservoirs. This removes reliance on geological constraints or critical materials. Further, the startup deploys integrated geopower systems analysis to optimize surface facilities and subsurface heat extraction.
Its approach includes geological and geophysical analysis, induced seismicity risk assessment, thermal modeling, borehole modeling, and more. This allows utilities, data centers, and industrial users to transition to low-carbon and baseload geothermal power on a large scale.
4. Sun Water Fire
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Hauts-de-Seine, France
- Use For: Residential Energy Autonomy
French startup Sun Water Fire develops solar technology that recycles water on-site and generates energy. It deploys Fresnel lenses to concentrate sunlight to heat water and generate steam. A proprietary evaporator decontaminates the water while a condenser condenses this steam into purified water.
The startup’s technology enables on-site water purification without chemical treatments and filters. Further, it features an electrolyzer that uses solar power to convert purified water into hydrogen. This hydrogen serves as a clean fuel to drive the startup’s generator, which balances electricity production and consumption.
This improves the self-sufficiency of homeowners in energy production. It also facilitates installers, material suppliers, and large businesses to transition to hydrogen and adopt cleaner fuels to meet sustainable goals.
5. zerio
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Cologne, Germany
- Use For: Legaltech for Energy Transition
German startup zerio provides an interactive platform to address legal questions in the energy distribution sector. Its Legal Guide platform comprises e-learning video tutorials, easy-to-understand instructions, legal texts and document templates, and contract generator tools.
This way, the platform guides energy distributors, energy brokers, and energy startups in resolving legal issues more quickly. It also addresses areas like dynamic tariffs, energy brokerage, and electricity supply agreements.
This facilitates the development of legally compliant energy products and services, accelerating market entry and reducing legal uncertainties in the energy transition.
Want to Explore 10 300+ Energy Transition Startups & Scaleups?
6. CGEN Engineering
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Edinburgh, UK
- Use For: Wind, Wave, and Tidal Energy Transition
UK-based startup CGEN Engineering manufactures modular electro-magnetic drivetrain generators for renewable energy generation. Being stackable, the generators facilitate modular architecture and scalable configurations. The modular design accommodates different power ratings with minimal variation in module size. It reduces downtime by replacing only the faulty module instead of the entire machine.
This also reduces the costs associated with installation, shipping, operation, and maintenance. Further, the startup’s technology features linear, radial flux, and axial flux rotors. This makes them suitable for low-speed, high-torque applications in the wave, tidal, and wind energy sectors. Consequently, the startup’s generators support the renewable energy transition for energy projects.
7. GreenCarbonFactory
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Heteren, Netherlands
- Use For: Energy Transition Localization
Dutch startup GreenCarbonFactory localizes the energy transition by installing modular energy systems in local facilities. These facilities convert woodchips from forestry byproducts into green energy and biochar. The system uses thermal conversion technology to operate continuously.
It enables industrial parks, greenhouses, farms, biomass processors, zoos, entertainment parks, and more to access a clean and stable local energy supply. Moreover, the produced biochar improves soil quality, filters water, and serves as a feedstock as well as a carbon sink. This way, the startup’s solution advances the circular economy by converting waste to energy and biochar.
8. Aetherflux
- Founding Year: 2024
- Location: San Carlos, CA, USA
- Use For: Space-based Solar Energy Generation
- Funding: Secured USD 50 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures and Interlagos
US-based startup Aetherflux develops a space-based solar power system. Its satellites collect sunlight in low earth orbit (LEO) and convert it to electricity. It transmits energy to ground stations using infrared lasers.
This setup enables continuous energy collection, unaffected by weather or daylight cycles. The system serves as a reliable alternative to current energy systems which are prone to natural disasters, extreme weather, and physical or cyber attacks. This makes it suitable for remote areas, disaster zones, and military operations.
9. Bactery
- Founding Year: 2023
- Location: Bath, UK
- Use For: Clean Electricity Generation
UK-based startup Bactery offers batteries using soil bacteria. Its battery electrodes capture free electrons released by soil bacteria breaking down organic matter. The battery generates electricity by driving electrons out of the ground.
This solution delivers power sufficient to run sensors and agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Operating without external power sources, the technology suits remote, off-grid farms and eliminates the need for battery replacements. It provides farmers with a weather-resilient alternative for transitioning to clean energy generation.
10. Halide Energy
- Founding Year: 2025
- Location: Espoo, Finland
- Use For: Copper-based Batteries
Finnish startup Halide Energy manufactures copper-based flow batteries for the renewable energy transition. The batteries use oxidation-reduction reactions in electrolytes to store and release energy.
The batteries’ modular design allows independent scaling of power and capacity as well as enables customization as per grid demands. They operate in containerized units, thereby being suitable for stationary deployment. This provides flexible energy storage for industrial and utility adopters.
Discover All Emerging Energy Startups
The energy startups showcased in this report are only a small sample of all startups we identified through our data-driven startup scouting approach. Download our free Energy Innovation Report for a broad overview of the industry or get in touch for quick & exhaustive research on the latest technologies & emerging solutions that will impact your company in 2025!
