A enterprise capital agency devoted solely to backing startups working to revive nature and biodiversity has closed its first funding spherical.
Superorganism has already used a number of 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 might 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 a substitute of taking a look at 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 unfavorable impacts they trigger.
- Intersection factors between nature and local weather. This might embody expertise for nature-based options, or utilizing nature as an adaptation to rising sea ranges.
- Enabling applied sciences. “We’re trying on the subsequent era of satellites, distant sensing, biotech, AI,” mentioned Webb. “We’re searching for issues that may be actually helpful within the arms of conservationists that permit them to do new issues or do extra with fewer sources.”
The fund has made 20 investments to this point within the $250,000 to $500,000 vary, with the deal with 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 sooner development and extra carbon sequestration. The startup says it has sequenced DNA in soil samples collected from lots of 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 development made potential by the inoculations. Funga has enrolled 28,000 acres and final yr revealed Netflix as the primary purchaser of its credit.
Inversa
Concerned with a pair of python loafers? How a couple of silverfish-skin pockets? Inversa has you coated. The startup pays searching and fishing cooperatives to provide it with invasive species extracted from wild ecosystems, which it then turns into completely different sorts of leather-based. Present targets embody 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 achieved extra removals in July 2025 alone than in the whole yr 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 techniques. Present finish merchandise embody movies that can be utilized as wrappers, luggage and home windows in packaging.
Vogue manufacturers utilizing Sway’s bioplastics embody Burton, Faherty and Florence Marine. The product can be obtainable 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.