IRCAI and AWS Select 23 New Startups for the 2025 Compute for Climate Fellowship

The program funds research and development of concepts that harness advanced cloud computing and artificial intelligence to solve global environmental challenges.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, July 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), an organization under the auspices of UNESCO, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), today announced the 23 innovative startups selected to participate in this year's Compute for Climate Fellowship, a global program that funds the development of innovative proof-of-concepts addressing the climate crisis. These forward-thinking startups will take advantage of AWS's advanced cloud computing and AI tech stack to develop innovative solutions in the fight against climate change.

"At IRCAI, we remain steadfast in our belief that the climate crisis demands bold, interdisciplinary solutions," said Davor Orlic, Chief Operating Officer of IRCAI. "With this year's cohort, we're deepening public-private partnerships that unite industry, government, and research to harness AI for climate action. Anchored in cutting-edge compute, rigorous R&D, and world-class talent, we're excited to support startups driving real, scalable solutions with the power to make a transformative impact for our planet."

The new generation of bold innovators ready to accelerate impact includes:

• 80 Acres Farm (US): A vertical farming leader using proprietary technology from its subsidiary Infinite Acres to grow pesticide-free produce indoors.
• Aionics (US): A leading developer of AI-powered materials discovery for electrochemical systems in aviation and mobility.
• Amini (KE): Addressing the Global South's most critical barriers to AI adoption – data and compute scarcity – by providing AI-native infrastructure that transforms fragmented, unstructured satellite and ground data into real-time, actionable intelligence.
• Anthrogen (US): Developing large protein foundation models for the discovery of de novo proteins with applications from human health to frontier climate efforts.
• Aura Aero (FR): A pioneer in low-carbon aviation designing and manufacturing aircrafts that accelerate air transport decarbonization.
• Avalo (US): An AI-powered agricultural technology company specializing in 'rapid crop evolution' to make the global agricultural supply chain more efficient, resilient, and sustainable.
• Barnwell Bio (US): Turning animal byproducts into biosecurity intelligence, providing early pathogen detection for livestock and poultry operations through environmental monitoring and metagenomic sequencing.
• BeyondMath (UK): Foundation models that simulate the physical world, accelerating insight and real-time design to unlock a new era of engineering intelligence.
• Climate X (UK): An AI-powered platform simulating high-resolution climate risks and adaptation strategies, helping financial institutions build more resilient portfolios.
• Climavision (US): Bringing together the power of a proprietary, high-resolution supplemental weather radar network with its Horizon AI forecasting technology suite to close significant weather observation gaps and drastically improve forecast speed and accuracy.
• CounterCurrent (AU): Decarbonizing the shipping industry by optimizing ocean routes using hyperlocal AI-powered ocean forecasts, satellite data, and autonomous onboard sensors.
• Cusp AI (UK): Using its AI-enabled materials 'search engine' to discover and validate next-generation materials up to ten times faster than traditional methods, accelerating powerful solutions related to climate change, the energy transition, and the future of computing.
• Eavor Technologies (CA): A next-generation geothermal technology company creating a clean, reliable, and affordable energy future on a global scale.
• FortyGuard (US): The world's first Temperature AI platform for enterprise integration, delivering 2-meter precision urban heat data and real-time insights all across the globe.
• Fuse Energy (UK): A fully integrated energy company, combining generation, supply, trading, and home installations.
• Matnex (UK): A deep tech startup accelerating the discovery and development of sustainable, next-generation materials using AI and quantum chemistry.
• Muir AI (US): A Product Intelligence platform that instantly reveals products' materials, origins, costs, and carbon footprint, enabling real-time scenario analysis for smarter, more sustainable decisions.
• OnDeck AI (CA): Enabling automated ocean monitoring through a Grounded Video Understanding system that leverages vision-language models and retrieval-augmented generation to perform label-free analysis of marine environments.
• Pretred (US): Championing a circular economy by transforming recycled tires into high-performance, decarbonized barriers to deliver innovative and sustainable infrastructure solutions.
• Rainstick (AU): Using electricity in the form of AI-driven bioelectric seed recipes to mimic the natural effects of lighting, growing crops bigger, faster, and more sustainably.
• SXD (US): Leveraging their patent-published AI to eliminate material waste by design, reducing material consumption by up to 69% and carbon emissions by 80%.
• Windfall Bio (US): Developing a nature-based solution that harnesses natural microbes known as mems to capture and transform waste methane from any source into valuable outputs.
• Xcimer Energy (US): Commercializing laser-driven inertial fusion, the only experimentally demonstrated fusion approach, to deliver affordable, reliable, zero-carbon energy.

"The intersection of climate innovation and generative AI is no longer theoretical–it's happening now, and it's reshaping what's possible," said Jon Jones, Vice President and Global Head of Startups at AWS. "This fellowship is about fueling this momentum by backing solutions with the potential to drive systemic change, whether it's advancing breakthroughs in clean energy and carbon capture, monitoring ecosystems and infrastructure at scale, or reimagining agriculture and manufacturing for a zero-waste future. At AWS, we're committed to giving these startups the tools, compute power, and support they need to scale their impact and accelerate progress where it matters most."

Here's what previous fellows say about the program:

"The Compute for Climate Fellowship connected us with AWS's world-class engineering team and infrastructure, accelerating our AI model development from weeks to days," said Kenny Lee, co-founder and CEO of Aigen. "The program was a turning point to ready our solar-powered robotic platform to quickly scale, enabling us to deploy in real farm fields, reduce chemical use, and support healthier food systems."

"Being part of the Fellowship has been really impactful for Smartex and the textile factories we work with worldwide," said Gilberto Loureiro, CEO and Co-founder of Smartex. "The program allowed us to better scale our technologies in textile hubs globally, generating positive environmental impact by reducing waste and emissions from this giant and highly pollutant industry."

Each startup will have their proposed proof of concept fully funded by the program, as well as access to resources and mentorship to develop solutions that align with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, including access to IRCAI's scientific expertise.

About IRCAI
IRCAI operates under UNESCO to advance AI applications supporting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, as it coordinates the European Green AI research project RAIDO and continues to invite to spotlight promising initiatives through its Global Top 100 list, it remains a key avenue for surfacing the kind of bold, AI-powered ideas that may one day shape future Fellowship cohorts.

About UNESCO
UNESCO contributes to peace and global cooperation in education, science, and culture.