🏭 Decarbonising heavy industry with HSBC, plus Founders Factory at NYCW
Founders Factory Startup Bulletin #54
This is the Startup Bulletin—written for founders, by founders. Each month we bring you a round-up of startup and investment stories, key learnings from founders, and insights from the Founders Factory team.
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Heavy industries such as steel, chemicals, and manufacturing are among the hardest sectors to decarbonise. Reducing their environmental impact is one of the greatest challenges in the climate transition, yet many of the technologies that could expedite change have struggled to achieve market adoption.
Industrial firms often operate with high capital intensity, limiting funds available for the kind of upfront investment that new technologies demand. In many cases, it isn’t just about swapping in lower impact equipment - it requires a wholesale rethinking of processes, supply chains, and business models. That scale of change has kept promising solutions on the sidelines.
Future Industries Partnership, our new programme delivered in partnership with HSBC and Third Derivative/RMI, aims to change this. In this edition, we profile the first cohort of startups selected for the programme - deploying a broad range of impactful technologies, from the replacement of carbon intensive building materials, to modular, energy efficient air-conditioning.
Also in this month’s newsletter:
Founders Factory at New York Climate Week
Fundraising round-up
WA new cohort
CODE
UKRI Innovate UK launch
Jobs roundup
⚡️ Scaling heavy industry startups with HSBC and Third Derivative
In June we launched the Future Industries Partnership in collaboration with HSBC and Third Derivative. A three-year philanthropic programme to accelerate climate technologies in heavy industry across Asia and the Middle East.
During the 18-month accelerator these startups will receive technical and commercialisation support, 1-2-1 mentoring, partner match-making and innovation showcases to guide their projects to success. Namely, reducing the emissions and environmental impact of heavy industry.
Here’s a look at the first cohort:
Carbon Signal – Cutting building audit times from months to minutes with high-fidelity energy intelligence.
Greengine – Creating scalable micro-algae based carbon capture for big industries and institutions.
HYDGEN – Modular electrolyzers producing ultra-pure green hydrogen directly on-site.
NoPo Nanotechnologies – Single-walled carbon nanotubes driving efficiency in batteries, polymers, and electronics.
Ocean – Bamboo-based building materials for low-carbon, climate-resilient construction.
Octolife – Affordable, modular AC delivering low-emission cooling at scale.
Renkube – Creating Motion-Free Optical Tracking boosts solar yields by up to 40%.
Rewind Turbine – Fully recyclable, modular wind blades for wind turbines simplifying logistics and cutting costs.
Torus Robotics – Building ultra-efficient axial flux motors reducing energy use in HVAC systems.
🌆 Founders Factory at New York Climate Week
Find us across multiple events at next week’s New York Climate Week.
The Maritime Decarbonisation Challenge
On the 24th September we’re convening a closed-door roundtable of shipping companies, charterers, cargo owners and port authorities to debate who pays, who builds, and who benefits from maritime decarbonisation. The discussion is hosted in partnership with J.P. Morgan alfa8 and Blue Action.
Industrial Transformation Summit
This New York Climate Week, on the 25th September, Founders Factory hosts its inaugural Industrial Transformation Summit with partners HSBC, Rio Tinto and Blue Action.
The summit will feature panels on mining ventures, supply chain transformation and aligning incentives between nature and industry, with expert insights from industry leaders, entrepreneurs and deep tech investors. 12 startups from Founders Factory’s global portfolio will present in our Startup Showcase.
💸 Fundraising Round-up
Meshed
🤖 Meshed raised an oversubscribed £950k pre-seed round to build the UK’s first AI-native insurance broker for SMEs.
Backed by Haatch, Exponential Science and Aviva (via Founders Factory), Meshed is rebuilding the insurance broking stack to deliver more efficient, cost-effective solutions.
Founded by Mark Costello (CEO), Vincent Liu (CTO) and Jake Wells (COO), the team are keen to connect with brokers, underwriters, engineers and builders with the vision to transform the insurance industry.
WALLROUND
🏠 WALLROUND closed a €4.2M oversubscribed seed round to digitise and streamline energy-efficient building renovations.
Led by Revent with participation from GGF and Vonovia, the funding will help WALLROUND, expand operations across Germany, enhance automated planning workflows and grow its tech, product, and operations teams.
Founded in 2024 via the Founders Factory & Vonovia Venture Studio, WALLROUND is fixing renovation’s outdated and fragmented processes by unifying property analysis, planning, procurement, and QA into one platform.
Congrats to co-founders Lukas Steinhilber (CEO), Tatiana Wotzasek (CPO) and Henning von Oesen (MD).
Hades Mining
🔥 Emerging from stealth, Hades Mining announced a €5.5M pre-seed round to build Europe’s first vertically integrated, tech-enabled mining company.
Founded in 2025 by Dr Max Werner, Björn Dressler and Dan Gengenbach, Hades Mining aims to reduce Europe’s >90% reliance on external sources for critical minerals by unlocking geothermal energy at scale.
Backed by Founders Factory and Rio Tinto through our Mining Tech Accelerator, the round is led by Project A with participation from Visionaries Tomorrow, Viessmann Generations Group and a network of strategic angels.
🚀 Congratulations to the Hades team!
Meet the Western Australia Gov Nature Tech Accelerator Cohort 3
We’re excited to announce the latest cohort for the WA Nature Tech Accelerator, in partnership with the Government of Western Australia.
From methane-busting seaweed and wildfire-detecting sensors to modular insect farms and ecosystem listening tech, these six pioneering companies are redefining how nature and innovation intersect to drive sustainability and economic diversification in Western Australia and beyond
The cohort includes:
Quenda (WA) – Zero-emission, solar rovers for land rehabilitation
Fremantle Seaweed (WA) – Growing seaweed to cut livestock methane by 80%
North Australian SeaCulture (WA) – Native seaweed farming & processing
Pyri (UK) – Passive ground sensors for early wildfire detection
Flybox® (UK) – Modular insect farms turning food waste into animal feed
Synature (CH) – Bioacoustic tech to measure ecosystem health
🌍 CODE Tech Founders Programme
This month, we welcomed a new cohort of Saudi Arabia’s most entrepreneurial companies to London for the third edition of CODE, run with the Ministry of Communications and IT of Saudi Arabia and Imperial Enterprise Lab.
Over six weeks, founders will be immersed in London’s ecosystem, gaining access to world-class expertise, connections, and intensive company-scaling support from the Founders Factory team.
👏 Huge congratulations to all the CODE founders selected.
Innovate UK Accelerator launch
You can now apply for the Hospital to Community Accelerator, a 10 week, non-equity programme designed and delivered by Founders Factory in partnership with innovateUK, part of UK Research & Innovation.
The accelerator supports up to 10 early stage health-tech startups working on remote monitoring, at-home diagnostics, new community care models, and digital tools that ease hospital pressure.
Open roles:
Senior Full Stack Engineer - Xapien - play a key role in shaping the core Xapien platform as they grow rapidly.
Tech Co-Founder - Tetto Assicurazione (LLM-Powered Home Contents Insurance) (Milan) – Tetto Assicurazione aims to revolutionise the Italian insurance market with a mobile-first, AI-powered home and contents insurance subscription service.
Senior Software Engineer - Mae - An opportunity for someone who is passionate about maternal health equity to build and shape key features of Mae’s platform
Growth Venture Builder - Founders Factory (Berlin) - 6 months, German speaker. We’re looking for a well-rounded, hands-on Venture Builder to help launch a new startup in the climate space with Vonovia, Europe’s largest residential real estate company.
Founder & CEO at AI-Driven Property Manager Voltigo (Berlin) - Voltigo taps into a multi-billion-euro opportunity — serving an underserved market with long-term user relationships and recurring revenue models based on energy usage, carbon savings, and future green lifestyle services.
looking to connect with more founders.. hi!