co2-reduction
(4)
Agros
Agros is a Singapore-based agtech company that helps smallholder fruit and vegetable farmers across Southeast Asia switch from diesel to solar-powered irrigation. It bundles hardware (its Agrosolar water pumps), flexible post-harvest financing (Agros Finance), and agronomy advisory into a one-stop platform, aiming to double farmer incomes while cutting fuel costs and carbon emissions. Founded in 2019 by Max Nelen, it operates in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia and has supported over 6,000 farmers.
AICrete Corp.
AICrete Corp. is a Richmond, California company building AICreteOS, the first AI-powered operating system for the concrete and aggregates industry. Founded by UC Berkeley PhD Parham Aghdasi, it unifies quality control and operations - connecting batch, dispatch and truck data into one platform - to cut concrete costs by over $3 per cubic yard and reduce CO2 by an average of 42 lbs per cubic yard. The company raised over $9 million in seed funding led by Clear Ventures.
Furno Materials
Furno Materials is a California cleantech company rebuilding how cement is made. Instead of the mile-long rotary kilns that make cement one of the dirtiest industries on earth - roughly 8% of global CO2 - Furno builds compact, modular vertical micro-kilns (the 'Furno Brick') that run at more than 80% thermal efficiency, roughly double a conventional plant. The kilns burn gas-based fuels, eliminate NOx and SOx emissions entirely, cut fossil-fuel emissions by at least 70%, and can reach zero emissions on hydrogen - all while producing standards-grade Ordinary Portland Cement at the point of demand.
Parham Aghdasi
Parham Aghdasi is the founder and CEO of AICrete, a Richmond, California climate-tech company that uses artificial intelligence to optimize concrete recipes in real time, cutting both cost and carbon. A structural materials engineer with a PhD from UC Berkeley, he spent a decade developing concrete composites for earthquake-resistant structures and ultra-high-speed train tunnels before turning his attention to one of the planet's dirtiest materials. Born in Iran and barred from higher education for his Baha'i faith, he studied at an underground university, came to the US with $6,000, and built a company that has raised over $9 million to give concrete producers, in his words, 'sustainable concrete superpowers.'