Featured Trends
We’ve sliced and diced our portfolio into distinct “trends” that define our edge.
Climate 100
We are pleased to report that as of April 2021 the SOSV Climate Tech 100 have raised $1.85 billion from investors and have a market cap of $5.65 billion. The average company is four years old. SOSV (our parent fund) has invested $89 million in these companies and was in most cases the first investor, though we continued investing through early rounds.
IndieBio has never been one to shy away from the riskiest and most impactful investments for our planet. In fact, we embrace them.
Female Founder
Boosting female representation in the startup world is an ongoing challenge, but we’re dedicated to gender balance, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because we would be dismissing impressive companies otherwise. We’ve found that more gender balance leads to better workplace culture and better ideas being exchanged.
Future of Food
It’s not just that we can make meat and fish in the lab, or with mushrooms and chickpeas. It’s not just that AI can predict the best plant ingredients to make the best tasting milk and yogurt. And it’s not just that yeast can be fermented to produce the healthier and better food preservatives. We’re diving deep every day into the foods that will satisfy novelty-seekers and conventionalists alike.
We’re putting big bets on the newest technologies and trends we think are ahead of the curve.
Future of Medicine
Medicine ain’t what it used to be. Today, bloodletting, skull-drilling and giving children cocaine for toothaches are relics of the past. Tomorrow, so too will addictive opioids, chemotherapy, and psychiatric drugs that are non-selectively bathing our bodies in chemicals.
The future of medicine is an exciting one, and we’re excited to share the most exciting technologies that enable the next wave of medicine and healthcare.
Impact
Our mission has always been Human and Planetary Health from the beginning, so it’s hard to say which of our companies are “impact” companies (in some ways, they all are).
Here, we narrowed down the startups that are directly addressing sustainability issues, improving public health, mitigating inequality, and democratizing access to infrastructure and technologies.
New Frontiers
Raising Now
Every season of the year, a new batch and about one-sixth of our alumni are in raise mode. These companies are currently raising and would love to talk to interested investors. We can set up those meetings or you can contact the companies directly.
Sustainable Solutions
Welcome to the era of “Direct Air Utilization.” You all know Direct Air Capture, and you all know Carbon Utilization. In a single step, SpiralWave radically brings down the energy and the costs of transforming the carbon in air and the hydrogen in water into hydrocarbon fuel. Unlike competing DAC and CCUS technologies and traditional […]
The $500 billion personal care and cosmetics industry is alarmingly reliant on raw materials from livestock. The three most important proteins in skincare and haircare products—collagen, keratin, and elastin—typically come from bovine hides, chicken feathers, and meat processing byproducts, respectively. Thus, cosmetics contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and deforestation. With two-thirds of consumers […]
To feed a global population of 9.7 billion people by 2050, farmers need to produce 50% more calories than they do today. However, large-scale farms rely on synthetic fertilizers, which degrade their soil and release more CO2 emissions than global aviation and shipping combined. Earnest Agriculture has designed a microbial consortium that protects crops against […]
Maritime shipping, aviation, and trucking will account for at least a tenth of global CO2 emissions by 2030 and cannot be electrified anytime soon. To meet EU emissions standards, cargo operators are already ordering methanol-powered ships. However, green methanol is currently produced using energy-intensive processes, resulting in a greenish fuel that can’t compete with oil […]
Over 53 million tons of electronics are discarded every year, wasting $57 billion worth of recoverable metals. Typically incinerated, this e-waste releases toxic fumes, causing people serious health problems. Only 17% of e-waste is recycled because existing methods are too expensive, energy-intensive, and pollutive. BioMetallica has developed the first eco-friendly biotechnology for recovering palladium, platinum, […]
Oil wells are not the first thing you think of when you think of lithium sources, but pumping oil out of the ground actually requires a lot of water, either to fracture the rock or to push out the oil of old wells. That water is often locally sourced from deep underground, and has to […]
Ethanol may be 10% of every gas tank, but the economics of making ethanol have become marginal. VIA Fuels enables ethanol plants to use their existing infrastructure and feedstocks to make much more valuable and versatile drop-in, carbon neutral fuels. Unlike ethanol, VIA Fuels can be blended at higher rates to create renewable fuels for […]
Carbon capture, utilization and storage has a dirty little secret that divides its proponents and opponents: capturing CO2 out of the air is cheap, but then releasing it from its capture solvent into a purified tank is up to 10x more energetically and financially costly. This is one of the reasons why opponents argue we’ll […]
Four years ago, Ben Slotnick was on the technical evaluation team for one of the largest carbon-capture-and-storage projects in the world, pumping CO2 under the North Sea. He came to the conclusion that spending over $1 billion in capex before sequestering any CO2 was the wrong path. And it was the wrong way to use […]
Despite a decade of innovation into new eco-friendly textile fibers, none of them work on the huge melt-spun fiber machines that enable low costs. 70% of the fibers used by the apparel industry are made by melt-spinning. The result is that virtually all fiber innovation is hindered by costs 2x to 3x higher than petroleum-based […]