As the impact of climate change becomes more disruptive and unpredictable. Irregular rainfall, prolonged droughts, and rising temperatures are hurting crop yields, causing more floods, and raising the risk of wildfires and damage to the environment.
In response, a new wave of Climate Tech solutions is emerging to address these challenges. These startups combine Earth observation satellites, AI, predictive analytics, and biotechnology to provide tools that help communities and industries better prepare for climate-related risks.
This article highlights how climate risk management startups are leveraging scientific advancements in real-world settings, from accurate flood monitoring, drought-resistant crops and satellite-based environmental threat monitoring. Together, these technologies offer a smarter, faster, and more scalable way to build climate resilience.
Floodbase (USA)
Floodbase was founded by Beth Tellman and Bessie Schwarz while pursuing their Master’s at Yale University. With prior experience working with climate-vulnerable communities, the founders saw how the lack of accurate, actionable flood data led to delays in aid, financial instability, and inequality.
Floodbase’s platform aggregates images of the Earth from up to 15 satellites, including radar data capable of detecting water levels through cloud cover. This information is processed using AI and machine learning to generate high-resolution flood maps.
This allows them to offer AI-powered parametric flood insurance solutions, designed to trigger payouts based on the severity and extent of flooding rather than on-the-ground loss assessments. The platform improves flood response and helps cover losses from business interruptions, crop damage, and public infrastructure caused by flooding.
Floodbase’s data has been used by the United Nations and national governments to support flood disaster planning and response. Floodbase raised a $5 million Series B in February 2025 from investors including Ecosystem Integrity Fund and Pulse Investment Partners.
Pula (Switzerland)
Pula is a Kenya-based agricultural insurance company. Small-scale farmers produce up to 80% of the food supply across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but less than 1% are insured. This leaves them highly vulnerable to droughts, floods, pests, and crop diseases exacerbated by climate change.
Pula keeps premiums low by bundling the insurance with agricultural products like seeds and fertilizers. The company uses satellite imagery, weather data, and machine learning to power its parametric insurance products and assess risk across geographies. Farmers are registered via mobile phones and Pula clusters users based on similar land profiles using machine learning.
Farmers activate coverage by texting a unique code inside the package, which links them to a specific satellite pixel. Rainfall is continuously monitored during the crucial planting period and if a drought is detected, Pula automatically replaces the farmer’s seeds. This level of automation and remote sensing ensures fast, efficient responses to crop failure without manual claim filings.
Farmers using Pula have seen a 16% rise in investment and a 56% boost in yields. Pula raised a $20 million Series B round in April 2024 led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and BlueOrchard, with the goal to reach 100 million smallholder farmers by 2029.
ICEYE (Finland)
The idea to develop ICEYE was born in 2012 when Rafal Modrzewski and Pekka Laurila took part in Aalto University’s entrepreneurship program. They developed a nanosatellite project called Aalto-1 which led them to explore how Earth observation could be done faster, cheaper, and with broader utility. That insight laid the foundation for ICEYE in 2014.
Today, ICEYE operates a fleet of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites tracking the Earth round-the-clock, regardless of weather or lighting conditions. ICEYE’s satellites deliver near real-time, high-resolution imagery that supports rapid disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, and environmental tracking at a global scale.
Governments use ICEYE to monitor and respond to natural disasters as they unfold, including floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. The data supports early impact assessment and search-and-rescue planning to infrastructure damage analysis.
ICEYE also provides data to the insurance industry to help accelerate claims decisions and improve exposure modeling. Its satellite-derived insights allow insurers and reinsurers to monitor events as they unfold, such as flood depth over insured properties or wildfire progression near high-value zones.
This has earned them global recognition on TIME’s World’s Top GreenTech Companies list in 2025. ICEYE closed a $65M Series E round in December 2024, backed by investors including Solidium Oy, BlackRock, Seraphim, Plio Limited, and Christo Georgiev.
Aistech Space (Spain)
Aistech Space was founded in 2015 by Guillermo Valenzuela and Carles Franquesa in Barcelona, Spain. The company combines geospatial analytics with nanosatellites to deliver affordable, high-resolution thermal infrared imagery from space. Its mission is to provide organizations with actionable environmental intelligence to monitor critical assets and anticipate climate risk.
Today, Aistech Space operates a growing fleet of 120+ small satellites equipped with a multi-spectral imaging system capable of capturing thermal, infrared, and visible data. This enables applications in wildfire detection, deforestation monitoring, maritime asset tracking, and infrastructure surveillance. By integrating satellite-captured thermal data with other sources such as radar and ground-based sensors, Aistech builds predictive models to identify threats earlier and respond more effectively.
In agriculture, Aistech’s thermal infrared imagery supports crop monitoring and risk analysis by detecting stress indicators at scale, combining remote sensing data with on-ground sensors. The technology can also be used for environmental risk monitoring for early warning, hazard modeling, and burnt-area mapping.
Aistech Space closed a $9.58 million Series B funding round in May 2025 backed by the European Space Agency, X-Europe, and other partners.
Elicit Plant (France)
Elicit Plant was founded in 2017 to tackle one of agriculture’s most urgent challenges: drought-induced crop stress. Its core innovation lies in the use of phytosterol-based biosolutions to reduce plant water loss and improve drought resilience.
Elicit Plant’s patented technology uses phytosterols to develop drought resistance in plants. Phytosterols are bio-based molecules derived from plant membranes that regulate plant stress responses. Applied through foliar spraying, these biochemicals reduce transpiration, and promote root development. The phytosterols help crops maintain productivity during periods of water scarcity helping farmers to have good yields under increasingly volatile weather conditions.
Field trials have demonstrated that Elicit Plant’s solutions can reduce crop water use by up to 20%, without altering existing farming practices. Elicit Plant closed a $48 million Series B round in November 2024 led by Carbyne, with participation from existing investors.
Climate Risk Management Startups Are Shaping the Future of Resilience
As climate change reshapes how we grow food, insure property, and protect infrastructure, traditional risk models fall short. What we’re seeing from these startups is a shift toward real-time, tech-enabled solutions combining satellite data, AI, and bio-based science to make climate risk more visible and manageable.
This new generation of Climate Tech startups moves beyond traditional models by delivering solutions that are precise, scalable, and rooted in real-time data. Whether it’s improving flood insurance payouts, enhancing drought resilience in crops, or detecting wildfire risks sooner, these innovations are tackling urgent problems with measurable impact. For investors and decision-makers, supporting these technologies is essential to managing the growing volatility of our climate.
The next article in our Climate Risk and Environmental Disaster Management series explores the investment trends influencing the sector, highlighting where capital is flowing, which regions are emerging as innovation hubs, and the breakthrough technologies capturing investor attention.
