Climate tech founders see VC as expensive and temporary. They would rather stack of grants, project finance, and strategic capital as they scale, they told me on stage at London Tech Week.
Free or grant-funded pilots are often unavoidable, however.
UK startups face a structural disadvantage for first-of-a-kind plants, with far less grant and debt funding available compared to European peers.
Venture capital is a temporary bridge for climate tech and the UK government must do more to introduce different funding options, according to founders on a panel at London Tech Week.
In an era of AI dominance, startups staying private for longer, and persistent funding gaps for once hot-ticket items, founders building climate and deep tech tell Tech Funding News on stage at the flagship conference that the current funding landscape still treats them like software companies, even though their capital needs, timelines, and risk profiles are fundamentally different
