Here are the climate tech startups at Y Combinator’s Demo Day

Y Combinator demo day On Tuesday and Wednesday, 31 startups focused explicitly on tackling climate change in one way or another.

why is it important: Y Combinator is one of Silicon Valley’s most respected startup accelerators, having produced companies like Airbnb and Coinbase, and this year’s climate cohort was the largest and best-funded yet.

By the numbers: YC funded the 31 startups with $500,000, an increase from previous cohorts who received $125,000 for completing the program.

  • The funding increase was announced in January. It includes the existing $125,000 for 7% of the company that was standard at YC, plus an additional $375,000 in an uncapped SAFE note with a “most favored nation” clause that guarantees YC will earn a favorable return regardless of is when it will cover the debt.
  • These are the most climate-specific investments YC has made in a single cohort, a YC representative confirmed to Axios. It has funded 91 climate startups to date.

Enlarge: The companies funded covered a range of increasingly popular areas within climate technology. A representative sample follows, in alphabetical order:

  • Alga Biosciences is an agri-tech startup in San Francisco that makes livestock feed that burps less methane.
  • Pelm is a San Francisco payments startup that wants to integrate utility services with Plaid. He claims to have signed five utilities covering about 16% of the US population.
  • Phoenix Hydrogen is a California and Arizona-based commodity investment software company focused on the hydrogen market.
  • Plover Parametrics is a San Francisco and Washington, DC-based data analytics startup that sells to insurance companies to bolster coverage for weather events or natural disasters. She claims to have signed letters of intent with three insurers.
  • Posh is a Bay Area battery recycling startup that wants to reuse rare materials from electric vehicle batteries. He claims to have signed $4.7 million in letters of intent in the past six weeks.
  • SixWheel is a San Francisco trucking startup created by a former cruise engineer who claims to be able to retrofit diesel trucks with hardware that converts them to hybrid-electric.
  • Unravel Carbon is a Singapore-based enterprise software company for emissions tracking and reporting.

The bottom line: Silicon Valley sees climate tech as a growing investment opportunity after years of avoiding the market due to previously unsuccessful bets.

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