Bob W. - short for 'Best of Both Worlds' - is a Helsinki-founded, tech-powered aparthotel operator offering design-led, sustainability-focused apartments across European cities. It blends the consistency of a hotel with the space and local character of an apartment, running an in-house technology stack for self-service check-in, a 24/7 app-based virtual host, and automated operations. Founded in 2018 by Niko Karstikko and Sebastian Emberger, the company operates in roughly a dozen countries and close to 20 cities, positioning itself as a lower-carbon, lower-cost alternative to both traditional hotels and short-term rentals.
Flash Forest is a Toronto-based reforestation company that uses drones, proprietary biological seed pods, aerial mapping, and machine learning to replant forests faster and cheaper than traditional hand-planting. Founded in 2019, it deploys aerial and ground-based systems to restore land degraded by wildfire and logging, and pairs planting with a forestry intelligence service that surveys and monitors forests. The company has planted more than 3 million trees and aims to reach one billion by 2028.
280 Earth is a climate-tech company that removes carbon dioxide permanently from the ambient air using a modular Direct Air Capture (DAC) system spun out of Alphabet's X, The Moonshot Factory. Its continuous-flow process uses a proprietary sorbent, off-the-shelf industrial equipment and low-grade waste heat or clean electricity to pull CO2 - and fresh water - out of the atmosphere at low energy cost. Its first plant in The Dalles, Oregon began operating in May 2024 and is designed to scale from hundreds to more than 20,000 tons of CO2 removed per year. The company's name references 280 parts per million, the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentration it aims to help restore.
Commons (formerly Joro) is an Oakland-based climate fintech that turns everyday spending into climate action. Its free mobile app links to users' cards to reveal the carbon footprint behind each purchase, rates brands to cut through greenwashing, and rewards people for buying better and less. Founded by Sanchali Pal, Commons has grown a community of over 450,000 members and raised roughly $14M from investors including Sequoia Capital, Amasia, and Jay-Z's Arrive.
Mote is a Los Angeles-based climate-tech company that turns woody waste biomass into clean biohydrogen while permanently sequestering the carbon. Using a biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) process spun out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Mote pairs energy production with carbon removal: each utility-scale plant is designed to produce roughly 60 tons of carbon-negative hydrogen per day while removing on the order of 450,000 tons of CO2 a year. The company is developing its first commercial facility near Bakersfield in California's Kern County and a second project in Northern California with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.