Carbon13 Research
Investment Thesis
Carbon13 is a climate-tech venture builder headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with a second hub in Berlin. Its stated mission is to respond to the climate emergency by helping entrepreneurs build ventures with the potential to mitigate at least 10 million tonnes of CO2e annually at scale. Rather than functioning as a passive check-writer, Carbon13 runs structured programmes that match individual founders into co-founding teams, validates deep-tech and climate ideas, and then funds the strongest teams directly. The firm frames its role across four pillars: creating new ventures by connecting founders, accelerating impact through expert guidance and capital, generating knowledge that benefits the wider climate innovation ecosystem, and closing diversity gaps in climate entrepreneurship (Carbon13 highlights that a majority of its founding teams include a PhD co-founder and many include female co-founders).
Stage Focus
Carbon13 invests at the earliest possible stage, explicitly targeting "founders who are pre-investment, pre-team, or even pre-idea." Its flagship Venture Builder programme runs for eight months across three phases: Teaming (10 weeks, matching co-founders and identifying problem spaces), Validation (3 months, building proof points and pitching an Investment Committee), and Acceleration (3 months, for funded ventures). Companies exit the programme at roughly pre-seed/seed stage and go on to raise SEIS and follow-on rounds.
Check Size
Carbon13 invests £120,000 into ventures that pass Phase 2 validation and are accepted into Phase 3 (Acceleration). Investments are made through its SEIS funds (currently on SEIS Fund X, syndicated in partnership with SyndicateRoom for some cohorts). Individual portfolio companies have gone on to raise further small rounds in the £300k-£500k range shortly after graduating (e.g., Auralytica's £350k raise, Climingo's £290k raise), suggesting Carbon13 and its syndicate partners continue to participate in follow-on rounds at that size. Equity terms are not publicly disclosed.
Lead Tendency
Carbon13 is typically the first institutional check and is described as leading or co-leading early rounds for the ventures it builds (e.g., "Climingo raises £290,000... led by Carbon13 with One Planet Capital and Innovate UK participation"). It behaves more like a co-founder/lead investor at formation than a passive follower.
Recent Activity
Carbon13 has been highly active through 2026, publishing frequent portfolio updates: a £290,000 round for weather-benchmarking startup Climingo (August 2026), a 10 MWh industrial-scale thermal battery deployment by AED Energy (July 2026), a batch investment into five new climate-resilience startups - Climingo, Algaenic, Mushroom+, HexSeed, and Viridys Bio - via SEIS Fund IX in partnership with SyndicateRoom (July 2026), and a £350k investment into sensor startup Auralytica (July 2026). The firm launched its tenth SEIS vehicle, Carbon13 SEIS Fund X, in June 2026, with exclusive rights to invest in startups built through its Cambridge Venture Builder across energy, AI, materials, food security, and supply-chain resilience. As of mid-2026, Carbon13 has invested in 107 startups since its 2021 founding and has itself raised a $2.2M seed round (from True Ventures and four family offices) to expand its Venture Builder Europe, Venture Builder UK, and Venture Launchpad programmes.
Portfolio Highlights
Carbon13's portfolio spans deep-tech and climate hardware/software across materials, energy, food systems, and industrial decarbonization. Notable companies include Cocoon (formerly Cocoon Carbon), which upcycles steel slag into a low-carbon cement substitute and raised a $15M Series A in March 2026 led by 2150 and Brick & Mortar Ventures; Materials Nexus (Matnex), an AI-driven materials discovery platform; Kita, a carbon insurance specialist that later raised a £4M seed led by Octopus Ventures with Carbon13 as an existing investor; Nium (wearenium.com), which uses nanotechnology to decarbonize ammonia production; Bluemethane, which captures methane from wastewater treatment; and Infyos, a battery supply-chain sustainability platform. The broader portfolio (80+ named ventures on the public portfolio page) covers thermal storage, carbon removal, sustainable materials, agri-food tech, and industrial decarbonization software.
Team
- Dr Nicky Dee - Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
- Michael Langguth - Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
- Jonathan Cumming - Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director
Decision Process
Ventures are selected by an Investment Committee at the end of the Validation phase (Phase 2) before receiving the £120,000 Acceleration investment. Carbon13 Capital Limited operates as an Appointed Representative of Thema Management Ltd (FCA-regulated, FRN: 978496) for its investment advisory activity.
Founder Preferences
Carbon13 explicitly recruits founders pre-team or even pre-idea, then matches them into co-founding pairs/teams during the Teaming phase. It favors technical and scientific founders - the firm notes that the majority of its funded teams include at least one PhD co-founder - and actively works to close diversity gaps, with many cohorts including majority-female co-founder teams.
Geographic Focus
Primarily UK (Cambridge headquarters) with an expanding Berlin, Germany hub (Venture Builder Berlin). Portfolio companies are based across the UK and EU.
Headquarters
Salisbury House, Station Road, Cambridge, CB1 2LA, United Kingdom.