A enterprise capital agency devoted completely to backing startups working to revive nature and biodiversity has closed its first funding spherical.
Superorganism has already used among the $26 million it raised to again startups creating leather-based from invasive species, rebuilding fungal networks in forests and producing plastic from seaweed.
“You can consider us so much like a local weather tech fund,” mentioned Kevin Webb, an investor and one of many fund’s managing administrators. “However as an alternative of enterprise alternatives to attract down CO2 or emit much less of it, we’re doing the identical factor for nature loss.”
The fund is premised on three areas of alternatives, defined Webb and conservation technologist Tom Quigley, his co-director:
- Industries traditionally tied to nature loss. Superorganism backs startups that may assist reinvent these industries, lowering the air pollution, habitat loss and different destructive impacts they trigger.
- Intersection factors between nature and local weather. This might embrace know-how for nature-based options, or utilizing nature as an adaptation to rising sea ranges.
- Enabling applied sciences. “We’re trying on the subsequent technology of satellites, distant sensing, biotech, AI,” mentioned Webb. “We’re in search of issues that may be actually helpful within the fingers of conservationists that permit them to do new issues or do extra with fewer assets.”
The fund has made 20 investments up to now within the $250,000 to $500,000 vary, with the concentrate on startups within the seed and pre-seed stage. The longer-term purpose is a portfolio of round 35 corporations. Backing for the preliminary spherical got here from AMB Holdings, Builders Imaginative and prescient, Cisco Basis and others.
Listed below are three startups that illustrate the fund’s targets:
Funga
Funga rewilds soil microbiology to speed up forest regeneration, resulting in quicker progress and extra carbon sequestration. The startup says it has sequenced DNA in soil samples collected from a whole bunch of forests and used machine studying to find which microbes correlate with more healthy forests. It makes use of that information to inoculate seedlings in industrial tree nurseries previous to planting in forest regeneration initiatives.
The startup generates income by promoting carbon credit issued for the forest progress made potential by the inoculations. Funga has enrolled 28,000 acres and final 12 months revealed Netflix as the primary purchaser of its credit.
Inversa
Focused on a pair of python loafers? How a few silverfish-skin pockets? Inversa has you coated. The startup pays looking and fishing cooperatives to provide it with invasive species extracted from wild ecosystems, which it then turns into totally different sorts of leather-based. Present targets embrace the iguanas which have invaded coastal habitats in Florida, pythons within the Everglades, silverfin carp within the Mississippi River Basin and lionfish from coral reefs within the Caribbean.
An Inversa partnership with Florida wildlife providers “supercharged” the removing of pythons from the Everglades, governor Ron DeSantis mentioned in October: “The brand new program completed extra removals in July 2025 alone than in your entire 12 months earlier than.”
Sway
Sway processes sustainably farmed seaweed from companions in Indonesia, Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Madagascar into TPSea, biopolymer pellets that may be built-in into industry-standard plastic manufacturing methods. Present finish merchandise embrace movies that can be utilized as wrappers, luggage and home windows in packaging.
Style manufacturers utilizing Sway’s bioplastics embrace Burton, Faherty and Florence Marine. The product can also be accessible by means of Atlantic Packaging, the biggest privately held packaging firm in North America, and was named a Finest Invention of 2025 by Time journal.
