Funding Friday: A European Climate Tech Heavyweight Bulks Up

This week’s Funding Friday comes with good news for a few hard-hit sectors. First up, the international sustainable infrastructure giant Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has raised a significant first close of its latest credit fund, highlighting institutional confidence in the maturing clean energy sector despite challenging political sentiments stateside.

Furthermore, clean iron startup Electra bolstered its capital base with debt financing from J.P. Morgan, another promising sign of life for low-carbon materials despite federal incentive rollbacks, grant cuts, and industry layoffs. Meanwhile, a new platform that helps homeowners cut upfront costs for clean energy upgrades also secured funding, even as the Trump administration exhibits its disdain for residential electrification initiatives. Finally, there’s also activity in silicon batteries and transformers, two areas gaining momentum as of late.

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners Raises $1.5 Billion for Energy Transition Fund

Building on the success of its first energy transition credit fund, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has raised nearly $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion) at the first close of its second credit fund, which will support renewable energy projects and companies driving the energy transition. While CIP is targeting a total of $2.29 billion (€2 billion) for the final close, this first tranche of capital exceeds the more than $1.1 billion (€1 billion) it raised for its first fund, which is now fully invested.

With roughly $40 billion in assets under management, CIP ranks among the largest climate and energy infrastructure investors globally. By comparison, sustainable infrastructure investment firm Generate Capital manages “only” about $9 billion in assets — though its recent $1 billion raise for its own dedicated credit strategy illustrates both the growing role of debt financing for clean energy projects and the increasing confidence that institutional investors have in the risk profile of low-carbon assets.

CIF has already begun allocating capital from this latest fund, refinancing a 450-megawatt portfolio of Dutch solar and battery storage assets, as it targets investments across Europe, North America, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. While it doesn’t disclose its limited partners, they span an array of typical LP categories, from sovereign wealth funds to insurance companies and pension funds, the firm says. CIF also contributed an undisclosed amount to the fund itself, signaling internal confidence in its strategy despite the headwinds facing renewables — particularly in the U.S.

A $30 Million Boost for Clean Steel

Building on its momentum from a big 2025, the clean iron startup Electra has announced a $30 million venture debt facility from J.P. Morgan. This lending agreement allows Electra to draw funds in tranches as it plans to build out its first commercial iron ore refining plant, expected to come online by the end of the decade. The mix of debt capital from a major institutional lender combined with last year’s $186 million Series B round — backed by prominent climate tech investors alongside iron ore mining companies and steel producers — is a sign the startup could be ready for a big infrastructure buildout.

Iron is the base metal for steel, and its energy-intensive refining process is the fundamental driver of steel-related emissions, which account for about 7% of the global total. Melting and purifying iron ore requires extremely high temperatures — around 1,600 degrees Celsius — traditionally achieved by burning coke derived from coal in blast furnaces. Electra’s tech, however, can refine iron at just 60 degrees Celsius by dissolving the ore in an acidic solution to separate it from impurities and then zapping that solution with electricity to deposit pure iron onto metal sheets.

While competitors’ systems typically require continuously high temperatures, Electra’s low-temperature approach pairs well with renewables, as it’s simple to start and stop the process in sync with wind and solar output. The startup has secured binding purchase orders from industry leaders such as Nucor and Toyota Tsusho, as well as an agreement with Meta to sell the tech giant the Environmental Attribute Credits associated with its reduced emissions.

Coral Nets $7.5 Million to Make Home Electrification Cheaper

The median American household has about $8,000 in savings, so expecting people to shell out thousands upfront for an energy-efficient home upgrade like a heat pump is a tough sell. That’s the problem electrification startup Coral aims to address with its platform that helps installers navigate the patchwork of electrification incentives — from state rebate programs to utility-run initiatives — and apply them directly at the point of sale, taking thousands off the upfront cost. So far, the platform has helped installers sell nearly 4,000 heat pumps across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, cutting upfront costs by 30%. This week the company announced a $7.5 million seed round to help expand its platform nationwide.

Homeowners often wait months to receive rebates from incentive programs in the mail — and that’s after they’ve spent untold hours parsing eligibility requirements and filling out paperwork. Coral verifies eligibility and manages the application process on customers’ behalf. And while it started with heat pumps, it now aims to expand both geographically and across other electrification opportunities, including water heaters, home batteries, and electric vehicle chargers.

The Trump administration phased out federal incentives for residential energy efficiency and electrification upgrades a full seven years early via last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but continued venture funding for startups like Coral and heat pump adoption platform Zero Homes, which I covered a few weeks ago, underscores ongoing demand for home energy upgrades.

This latest funding round, led by ResilienceVC, also included strategic participation from Watsco Ventures, the VC arm of North America’s largest HVAC distributor, showing that corporates remain committed to the sector, as well.

Group14 Begins Silicon Battery Material Production in South Korea

The advanced battery materials company Group14 makes a silicon-carbon composite anode for batteries that, it says, can charge from 0% to 100% in just 90 seconds. Now the startup has officially started production of its proprietary formula at a facility in South Korea, which is expected to ramp up to 2,000 metric tons of material annually — about 10 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity. Depending on what its customers — which include batterymakers Molicel and Sionic Energy —are optimizing for, Group14 says they can build cells that are 43% more energy dense or charge 50 times faster than traditional lithium-ion chemistries.

While standard batteries typically have graphite anodes, silicon could theoretically, at least, be a superior choice. But pure silicon anodes are prone to swelling, causing mechanical stress and destabilizing the battery. Group14 says it has solved this challenge by building a nanocarbon scaffold to contain the silicon and prevent it from expanding as the battery charges and discharges.

Group14’s battery materials can already be found in consumer-focused electronics such as certain Android smartphones, cargo drones, and yet-to-be commercialized air taxis. CEO Rick Luebbe told TechCrunch that if the startup can scale into the EV market, that could enable cars to, say, wirelessly recharge while they’re at a stoplight, “You’d never think about charging ever again,” Luebbe said.

Bonus: More Good News for the Humble Transformer

In a small but telling seed round, the solid state transformer company Hyperscale Power has raised $5.7 million to build a prototype that it says will be even more compact than products from a growing field of competitors. The raise follows two much larger financing rounds in the solid state transformer space that I covered recently — $140 million for Heron Power and $60 million for DG Matrix — highlighting rising demand for smarter, smaller, and more efficient transformers as data centers push to maximize their usable space and electricity load growth strains conventional grid infrastructure.

The company expects data centers to be a core market As Hyperscale’s co-founder Daniel Rothmund said in a release, “Server racks are becoming significantly denser, and our technology provides the ideal solution.”