This year at Climate Week NYC, we focused not just on innovative technologies, but on ecosystem-wide innovation, including bold new approaches to funding, cross-sector collaboration, and entrepreneurial support that can catalyze and sustain the future of hard tech for good.
We put our new mission statement—building the community that drives science into impact—into practice, bringing together inspiring minds from across the hard-tech ecosystem for crucial conversations, collisions, and collaboration.
From our signature hard-tech showcase, to curated roundtables, to thought partnership opportunities, and more, we hosted and co-hosted a variety of events that were designed with today’s shifting landscape in mind. Here are a few highlights.
Cross-Sector Problem-Solving with Microsoft
Together with Microsoft’s Environmental, Connectivity, and Sustainability (ECS) team, we piloted a new kind of convening that brought together corporate leaders and startup founders to accelerate solutions around a specific problem—in this case, water reduction and recycling innovation in industrial applications, including data centers.
We invited a strategic mix of stakeholders into the room: technology innovators, buyers, and funders—including Activate Fellows and alumni, Climate Innovation Fund portfolio investees, Microsoft’s Water and Climate Innovation Fund experts, hyperscalers, and water investors.
Through facilitated breakout sessions, and mapping to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal Six (clean water and sanitation), participants identified market innovation gaps and enabling conditions for scaling water reduction and recycling technologies, with an emphasis on industrial applications, real estate, and replenishment.
The event’s format and participant mix demonstrated how Microsoft and Activate's dynamic partnership could facilitate meaningful cross-sector collaboration.
Vickie S. Robinson, General Manager, ECS at Microsoft, and Activate CEO Cyrus Wadia gave remarks that underscored the importance of this kind of collaboration in unlocking scalable, durable ideas for global impact.
Traveling to the Future Through Deep-Tech Demos
For the third year in a row, we hosted our “Live from the Future” hard-tech showcase, featuring the most innovative technologies of tomorrow—from critical minerals extraction and processing, to energy storage, to advanced manufacturing. Sponsored by DCVC, Foley Hoag, and New Energy New York (NENY), and Urban Future Lab, with support from Impact Science Ventures, Newlab, and The Engine, the event was the only one like it that centered on hard tech.
It was our biggest showcase yet, with 56 startups demoing their technologies (a jump from last year’s 33 startup participants). Exhibitors hailed from all five Activate communities, from every Activate cohort since 2020, and from across the ecosystem. Additionally, for the first time, the demo hall included a space for ecosystem partners, such as Clean Fight and Climate Expertise Network.
So, what did participants encounter in their visit to the future? They saw innovations from companies like Still Bright (Jon Vardner, Cohort 2022), which is working on domestic copper refining and recently raised an oversubscribed $18.7M seed round; Foray (Ashley Beckwith, Cohort 2022), which grows plant cells for biomanufacturing; AIMM (Luis Estevez, Cohort 2025), whose technology removes contaminants from wastewater 20+ times faster than existing methods; and Blaze Energy (Rok Sitar, Cohort 2023), which is developing technology to enable zero-carbon combustion through ammonia.
Not only did attendees get to actually interact with prototypes at the showcase, it was also a crucial networking opportunity for the innovators behind the demos.
“We interacted with a tremendous amount of interested potential partners,” Luis Estevez, founder and CEO of AIMM, said after the event.
“We are based in Denver, and it’s great to have these focused events where we can get a lot of exposure to great VCs,” added Rok Sitar, co-founder and CEO of Blaze Energy.
Expert-Led Roundtables for Founders
Founders are constantly facing hard challenges, often alone. We designed an event to support founders in a new way—not through another networking happy hour or pitch session, but through curated, candid conversations with peers and subject-matter leaders.
In partnership with Fenwick LLP, we hosted “Lunch with a Purpose,” an event featuring expert-led roundtable discussions. Topics ranged from the professional to the personal, such as today’s VC climate, navigating IP strategy, fundraising with family offices and foundations, and running a company as a parent.
We were glad to have two former Managing Directors of Activate communities among the facilitators of the deep-dive discussions.
Catalyzing Capital Across the Innovation Continuum
Too often, groundbreaking scientific innovations stall when transitioning from the lab to the workforce and market economy—the point when risk is highest and funding opportunities are hardest to find. (This is one of the reasons Activate was founded ten years ago.)
Now, more than ever, a holistic approach is needed for funding early-stage hard-tech startups. With this in mind, we partnered with LabStart, a fellowship for undercapitalized founders, to convene a timely conversation on catalyzing capital across the innovation continuum.
Several speakers took the stage, including Kat Taylor, Co-Founder and Board Chair of Beneficial State Bank. In a fireside chat with LabStart CEO Deepa Lounsbury, she spoke about her experience supporting groundbreaking ideas and founders through catalytic capital—including Activate alumni company Twelve. Shereen D'Souza of SkyLine Foundation, Activate Board Member Nicole Systrom, and Rick Stockburger of the Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation also shared impactful messages on the importance of championing innovation for good and supporting founders.
Additionally, Activate Fellow alumni Kaitlyn Suarez (Cohort 2023, Terra Watts) and Etosha Cave (Cohort 2015, Twelve) spoke about the impact of catalytic funding on their companies. Both Suarez and Cave have commercialized revolutionary technologies—wireless power transmission and transforming CO₂ into high-value products, respectively—and Cave has now returned to Activate as Executive-in-Residence and to support fellows as Interim Managing Director of the Activate New York Community.
Looking back at Climate Week 2025, we’re thankful for our network that shares our vision for hard tech for good—our fellows and alumni, partners, sponsors, and other hard-tech supporters. We came together and demonstrated once again that community is everything—and that supporting individual early-stage founders on their journeys to impact means dedicating ourselves to building and strengthening the ecosystem as a whole.