Just over a year since launch, The Climate Brick returns with its 2025 edition. The open-source manual is designed to help climate tech founders, investors, and institutions navigate the scaling journey and unlock new opportunities. This new version brings new perspective and insights shaped by a year of adoption, ecosystem feedback, and market evolution.

According to research drawn from multiple sources and which includes analysis by McKinsey & Company, approximately 900 European climate tech companies secured funding in 2024, raising a total of $22 billion: a 31% increase from 2023. A notable shift toward debt financing was observed, with nine of the year’s twenty largest rounds structured as debt deals, reflecting a growing reliance on blended capital strategies to scale capital-intensive technologies.

Gigas-scaling companies remained the dominant segment in 2024, accounting for nearly half of all capital raised and ~250 funding rounds. In parallel, early-stage investment also accelerated, with around 500 of the 900 raises occurring at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages – a 40% year-over-year increase, highlighting the momentum of innovation in the sector.

However, over the past 12 months, geopolitical instability, rising energy demands, and legislative shifts have intensified the challenges faced by climate tech companies. At the same time, macroeconomic headwinds have underscored the urgency of commercial resilience and scalable business models.

In 2025, climate tech stands at a pivotal moment. As AI, data infrastructure, and electrification accelerate global energy demand, climate technologies are transitioning from niche innovation to critical infrastructure. The early enthusiasm-driven phase of climate tech investing is giving way to a new era focused on execution, capital efficiency, and industrial readiness.

Against this backdrop, the 2025 edition of the Climate Brick reflects a new phase for Climate Tech and directly address the following themes:

• Business Criticality: Climate tech solutions must prove indispensable to core industrial, energy, and infrastructure systems.

• Cost and Profitability: Green premiums are contracting. Companies must demonstrate clear paths to cost competitiveness and attractive unit economics.

• Macro Resilience: With fluid economic and legislative conditions, forward-looking planning and strategic flexibility are required.

• Execution Excellence: Scaling physical assets demands operational strength and industrial experience across management, advisory, and board levels.

• Late-Stage Financing Preparedness: Planning for project finance and infrastructure capital at early stages is essential to unlock scale.

Ted Persson, Partner at EQT Ventures and initiator of the Climate Brick, said: "We launched The Climate Brick as a bet: that a simple, founder-first framework could help unlock clarity in one of the most complex and critical sectors of our time. A year later, it’s become a tool that teams are actually using, and improving. That gives us real hope."

Rokas Peciulaitis, Founding and Managing Partner at Contrarian Ventures and initiator of The Climate Brick, said: “Frameworks like The Climate Brick are necessary tools to accelerate and scale climate innovation across Europe. It’s a great example of how open, data-driven toolkits can support company scaling, acting as both a benchmark and a north star for what success looks like. The 2025 update highlights the rapid evolution and dynamic nature of this sector.”

The Climate Brick is a growing community initiative with approximately 100 supporters across the climate tech ecosystem: including investors, founders, operators, debt financiers, and industrial players. Among current supporters are EQT Ventures, Contrarian Ventures, Norrsken VC, BMW Foundation, Einride, Climeworks, Siemens Energy, and others. 

The ambition of The Climate Brick is to grow as an open, collaborative platform designed to support climate tech founders in scaling their businesses successfully. While still early in its journey, the initiative is built with the intention to expand, bringing together more voices, tools, and perspectives to accelerate the innovations needed to meet the climate challenge at scale.

The 2025 edition of The Climate Brick remains open-source, founder-first, and designed to evolve with the climate tech landscape, offering a shared vocabulary for tracking progress and aligning stakeholders.

climatebrick.com