Twelve Bets For Nature
Our 2025 predictions for nature tech, plus Superorganism Wrapped: our 2024 in data
🪸 We’re Superorganism, the first VC for startups that benefit biodiversity. Each month we publish thoughts from the frontline, company updates, and a round-up of new happenings in the nature tech world.
Happy new year! We hope that over the holidays you found time to reconnect with loved ones and with nature. With 2025 already in full swing, it’s time to share some predictions for nature tech this year.
Reckoning with 1.5 (+)
2024 was the first year in human history where the world crossed 1.5C. Partly anomalous owing to factors like El Niño, 2024 offered a sober glimpse of a warmer world. There were fires in the Americas, flooding in Kathmandu and Appalachia, and for 15 straight months, sea surface temperatures reached new record highs.
Equally concerning are the ways in which overall warming impacts wildlife, through natural disasters, increased ocean acidity, and changing habitat ranges. Just a few 2024 headlines:
A Single Heatwave Killed Half of Alaska’s Common Murres | Audubon
90% drops in snow crab populations were likely tied to climate change | NOAA
NOAA reported the fourth-ever global coral bleaching event
With new global leadership and a rapidly growing need for power to fuel AI, the odds of the world remaining below Paris’s 1.5C target look grim. But a world at 1.6C would be better than one at 2C, and substantially preferable to one at 3C or higher. Every fraction of a degree still matters, and we have the tools, the will, and the capacity to build better futures.
Some predictions for nature and nature tech on a 1.5C+ path:
Nature as infrastructure. From mangroves to resist storm surges, to urban forests for cooling cities, we’ll more urgently need efficient, resilient, and popular natural solutions to adapt to a warmer world. Look for more attention on resilience and adaptation, especially as climate impacts become more obvious.
Geoengineering in the conversation. With no slowdown in global energy demand in sight, we expect more research in, as well as new advocates for, some forms of geoengineering. Tools like atmospheric aerosols to modify weather or enhance solar reflectivity might offer reprieve from some of climate change’s harms, but would almost certainly come with complex tradeoffs. Look for more conversations, with louder opinions on all sides. (For more, check out Elizabeth Kolbert’s Under a White Sky).
More disruptions to “nature as we know it.” The fossil record has repeatedly shown that sudden shifts in global climate tend to be linked with mass extinctions. In 2025, expect more stories of species, populations, and ecosystem disruption linked to climate: species shifting their ranges, failing to find enough food, or falling to panzootics (animal epidemics). For humans, look for supply chain disruptions, and for the worst impacts to the third of the global population who depend on nature for their primary needs.
The dynamism dynamic
Where 2022 and 2023 were steps forward for nature-focused policies and collective global action, in 2024 the pendulum swung back. The EU delayed implementation of EUDR (and CSRD for non-EU companies) by a year, biodiversity and climate COPs reached underwhelming results, a major global plastic treaty fell through, and a rightward shift marked elections around the world. But as we covered last month after the US elections, a vibe shift is underway: proponents in the tech community have termed their movement “dynamism,” and are excited to “build baby build.”
Here’s what we expect from nature tech in the new moment.
A nature that builds. In the US, we have an incoming administration that promises to build, and has cast environmental permitting laws as an impediment. An opportunity we see for nature tech startups is to streamline ecological permitting and monitoring. An example: our investment Spoor, which helps offshore wind farms comply with environmental regulations by using AI to monitor for bird species and movements.
Private sector solutions. A new focus on efficiency and cost-cutting may create more opportunities for the private sector to serve different agencies, much like Anduril and Palantir have in defense. Where might such technologies be useful for the Forest Service, or the EPA?
New policies. Progress isn’t linear. Despite some loss of yards elsewhere, in 2024 the UK pushed through Biodiversity Net Gain, the EU’s Nature Restoration Law entered into force, and even in the US elections, nature and climate-positive ballots won across both red and blue states. With nature and a healthy environment still broadly popular, we’ll be watching for new forms of nature-positive laws that can grow the nature tech space further.
AI keeps AI-ing
We’re echoing our very brave 2024 prediction that AI will continue upending everything. Just this year, we saw humanoid robot breakthroughs, Google’s Veo 2 and OpenAI’s Sora reach milestones in AI-video generation, and in downtown San Francisco, Waymo’s self-driving cars overtook Lyft in popularity.
More applications. There’s core AI and infrastructure development, and then there are the applications of AI in markets, industry, and science. In nature tech, expect more of the latter: better geospatial analysis, tools for realtime species identification, discovery of new sustainable materials, AI-powered challengers to nature-negative incumbents.
Eating up capital. VC capital raised hit record lows in 2024, resulting in slower deal speed and reduced valuations (mostly). The big bright exception was for startups building or leveraging AI. Expect the same in nature tech; for VCs deploying capital in an uncertain economic environment, AI-forward startups are likely to keep the shine throughout 2025. All else equal, “bits” startups will have an easier time than “atoms” startups (except, of course, for AI-enabled atoms startups).
Ecological tensions. Now that everyone from startups to governments to F500 companies are looking to leverage AI, the next-order challenge we’re watching closely will be how startups are addressing the ecological implications associated with these data centers’ energy demands, freshwater cooling needs, and land use footprint. And if corporations continue honoring their net-zero promises while quickly expanding energy footprint to fuel AI, it could be a boon to nature-based solutions as they look to nature to offset their impacts.
Growing pains, but a big year for nature tech
We’re still in the early innings of nature tech as a category (for a primer, check out Integrating Nature Tech by Nature 4 Climate and several collaborators), but 2025 is already shaping up to be a banner year. Some predictions:
Generalists’ first forays. Partly driven by the EU’s EUDR and CSRD, we’ve met with many climate and generalist VCs exploring investments in nature tech. Stopping nature loss means addressing upstream issues like pollution, overexploitation, and global land use. These can fit within many climate or generalist mandates, and with a profitability-focused post-2022 startup vintage coming up for new raises, we’re expecting more raccoons.
More casualties. More breakouts. 2024 saw several well-funded sustainability startups stumble, with Running Tide shutting down, Ynsect filing for protection, and Renewcell declaring bankruptcy. With pullback in voluntary carbon markets, capital constraints, and a new political reality, we’ll be surprised if we don’t see more stories like this in 2025. But we also expect more nature-positive startups to cross $1B valuations, and more later-stage rounds as with Inari ($103M), Basecamp Research ($60M), and Planet A Foods ($30M) in 2024.
A pivotal year for nature reporting. EUDR and elements of CSRD were delayed, but if their substance can survive political opposition, they will become law in early 2026 and mid-2025, respectively. Many multinational corporations would then need to be ready to understand and disclose their supply chains’ ecological impacts, creating a need for new alternatives and measurement tools. Meanwhile, TNFD (a voluntary commitment with over 500 signed companies, $6T in global market cap, and $16T in AUM) will be finalizing its guidance on nature transition plans, further upping the stakes of 2026 for reporting.
Our most important prediction, though, is that there will be more new nature tech startups founded than ever before. There’s never been a better or more urgent time to build in nature tech. Which is why at Superorganism, we expect 2025 to be our most active year yet.
Superorganism Wrapped
Finally, to kick off the new year, it’s time to celebrate the past one. It’s been a pivotal year as we backed incredible nature tech founders, shipped new biodiversity resources, and gathered the community at events across the world.
We founded Superorganism in 2022 to back founders with wild ambition, building an abundant world for humans and nature alike. For the past 2 years, these founders have been pushing hard for a brighter future for species, ecosystems, and humans.
This year, we added 6 companies to the portfolio, including two stealth AI, one stealth fintech, and:
Array Labs: Founded by Andrew Peterson and Isaac Robledo, Array Labs is creating high-quality, high-refresh-rate 3D images of the planet using arrays of SAR satellites.
Foray Bio: Founded by Ashley Beckwith, this biotech startup uses plant cell culture to scale seed supply for tree restoration, including rare, native, and possibly extinct plant species. Read more in TechCrunch, and in our Substack.
Spoor: Founded by Ask Helseth and Helge Reikerås, Spoor uses AI on commodity camera equipment to detect bird species and movement, a mission-critical task for wind farm siting and compliance. Read more in Techcrunch.
2024 has been a year of firsts for these companies. Major milestones include:
Array Labs put their first two satellites in space, Rock and Lopen.
Cecil inked partnerships with Google Earth, Planet, Kanop, and Chloris and released data products for Forest Carbon, Aboveground Biomass, and Land Cover.
Inversa python products walked the runway with famed designer Gabriella Hearst and they conducted the largest contractor removal of invasive carp in Mississippi history.
Funga closed an exclusive partnership with the largest seedling provider in North America, and 3x’d their forest acres under management.
Planet A Foods announced both their $15M Series A and their $30M Series B.
Spoor completed Norway’s first long-term offshore collision study, tracking over 21,000 birds near a wind turbine in Norway for two years and finding zero collisions.
Sway launched their TPSea Flex seaweed-origin polybag with prAna, Faherty, Florence, and Alex Crane all committing to the product.
Ulysses took their seagrass-planting robot on its maiden voyage to restore seagrass meadows in Australia.
To date, Superorganism startups address 13 of the 23 targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework (the Paris Agreement for biodiversity). We’re exceptionally proud that in just two years, our founders have delivered:
3.5K+ hectares of land regenerated
500+ metric tons CO2e avoided
600+ kgs of plastic waste avoided
50K+ invasive species removed
1M+ animals tracked
85M+ hectares of land monitored
2024 was also a big year for us at Superorganism. This year we:
Launched our Substack and wrote monthly deep-dives on everything nature tech, from urban ecology to biotech to geopolitics.
Launched our Jobs Board for careers with our portfolio companies.
Hosted Restore, our first biodiversity tech summit during NYCW.
Were honored as an Impact Assets IA 50 2024 Emerging Manager.
And through it all, we hosted or cohosted 15+ events for the nature tech community at events across Colombia, Finland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
That’s just a taste of what we have planned for 2025. Expect more new companies, events, content, and pushing the front lines of nature tech forward into another new year.
Thank you all for being with us on this journey, and here’s to an abundant 2025.
Notes From The Field
Updates from our portfolio companies, and from us at Superorganism
🌐 Cecil is partnering with Google to provide Google Earth Engine (GEE) datasets on Cecil's nature data platform, beginning with their first Land Use / Land Cover metric. Read more and learn how to access.
🍄 Funga shared their “Funga Wrapped” for 2024 including 3x more forest acres under management, millions of seedlings inoculated, and 8,247 Nerd Clusters consumed. (We think Nerd Cluster is pretty good description of Funga, too.)
🪴 Rosy Soil announced their $3.6M seed round with participation from Boost VC, Draper Associates, Climate Capital, and us.
🦅 Spoor was listed as one of the 51 most disruptive startups of 2024 by Techcrunch.
🪸 As for us at Superorganism in December…
We made a new investment in a stealth AI company.
Kevin hosted a keynote fireside chat with Colossal’s Chief Scientist (and Superorganism mentor) Beth Shapiro at Hack Summit NY.
Over Christmas, Kevin made a pilgrimage to the Galapagos (and took the photo of the diving brown pelican in this month’s cover shot).
Want to join a Superorganism company? Check out our Jobs Board, with 28 active jobs currently available. Start your nature tech career today!
Ecosystem News
🤝 Friends of the fund
Where are the field builders? | David Lang
The V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation is requesting proposals for Nature-Centrism as a Lens for Organizational Behavior and Decision-Making
500,000 Taxa on iNaturalist!
🌳 Climate and Conservation
Denmark will plant 1 billion trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest | AP News
Mining the Sun: Benefits of Solar Energy on Former Mine Sites | TNC
In a Major Reversal, the World Bank Is Backing Mega Dams | Yale E360
Ecuador Announces Its First Debt Conversion to Support Terrestrial and Freshwater Conservation in the Amazon | TNC
⚖️ Policy
Qatar warns it will halt gas supplies to Europe if fined under EU due diligence law | Politico
Can Support for Clean Energy Withstand Changing Political Winds? | Yale E360
This Might Be the Last Chance for Permitting Reform | Heatmap News
🔬 Science and technology
International agricultural trade has caused 90 percent biodiversity loss | Tech Explorist
The Top Ten Dinosaur Discoveries of 2024 | Smithsonian
Announcing SPARROW: A Breakthrough AI Tool to Measure and Protect Earth’s Biodiversity in the Most Remote Places | Microsoft
Migrating bats surf warm winds to soar hundreds of kilometers | Science | AAAS
Thank You!
Thanks for reading and for supporting Superorganism, and a special thank you to everyone who went above and beyond this month with introductions, diligence, advice, and help to founders:
Adrian Champion, Tim Coates, Will Coleman, Anthony Del Porto, Conor Farese, Jonathan Hursh, Jason Kibbey, Eric Klein, Iván Markman, Olivier Mougenot, Josh Patterson, Alison Sander, Ryan Shearman, Coty Sidnam, Maki Tazawa.
And a very special thank you to all of you who read along with us in our first year of Substack. Have suggestions or ideas for what we should cover in 2025? Let us know!