Hi,

Wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. Here’s a quick missive, simply bringing you some numbers on India’s space tech startup funding, courtesy a press release earlier today from Tracxn, a leading provider of private markets intelligence.

Highlights

• India’s SpaceTech ecosystem has raised approximately $871 million across 241 funding rounds and 285 companies as of July 2026.

• The top 10 funded companies account for more than 60 percent of this total, led by Skyroot at $150 million.

• Bengaluru leads all hubs with $495 million raised across 106 rounds, and hosts seven of the top 10 funded SpaceTech companies.

• Pixxel, the city’s largest funded company, accounts for nearly 19 percent of Bengaluru’s total.

• Annual funding rose from $43 million in 2021 to $200 million in 2025, with $113 million raised across 24 rounds already in 2026 year-to-date.

• Five landmark rounds — at Skyroot, Digantara, EtherealX, Bellatrix Aerospace, and AgniKul — accounted for $158 million, over half of all capital deployed across 2025–26.

• Skyroot’s $150 million raised makes it the sector’s best-funded company, valued above $1.1 billion after its May 2026 round — India’s first SpaceTech unicorn.

• Pixxel ($96 million), AgniKul Cosmos ($76 million), and Digantara ($67 million) are among the other leading funded companies in the ecosystem.

• Hyderabad and Chennai round out the leading hubs, at $205 million and $80 million respectively. Hyderabad’s funding is anchored by Skyroot and Dhruva Space (87 percent of the city’s total), while Chennai’s is almost entirely AgniKul (95 percent).

Press release

28 July 2026 - Tracxn, the global market intelligence platform for private company data, released the India SpaceTech, a comprehensive analysis of India’s private SpaceTech ecosystem. The report maps $871M raised across 241 funding rounds through July 2026, covering companies across launch vehicles, satellite manufacturing, propulsion systems, space situational awareness, earth observation, and downstream analytics.

The ecosystem spans 285 companies, of which 274 remain active and 72 have received institutional equity funding, across launch vehicles, satellite manufacturing, propulsion systems, space situational awareness, earth observation, and downstream analytics. The central finding is that India’s private SpaceTech ecosystem has been shaped by policy reforms, with government-led regulatory changes enabling private participation, attracting institutional capital, and supporting the emergence of India’s first SpaceTech unicorn and privately developed orbital launch vehicle.

Vikram-1 in Orbit: A Six-Year Journey From Policy Reform to Launch

Skyroot’s Vikram-1 reached a 450-kilometre low Earth orbit on July 18, 2026, deploying four payloads, including technology demonstrations from Grahaa Space, Cosmoserve, DCubed, and Skyroot’s SCOPE satellite. The mission made India the third country after the US and China to achieve a privately developed orbital launch capability.

The launch also highlights the pace of ecosystem development. India achieved its first private orbital launch within six years of opening the sector to private participation in 2020. Skyroot plans another test flight later in 2026 before commencing commercial launch operations in 2027.

India SpaceTech Funding Reaches a Record $200M in 2025

Funding increased from $43M across 12 rounds in 2021 to a record $200M across 53 rounds in 2025, with 2026 YTD maintaining strong momentum. Five funding rounds—Skyroot Aerospace ($50M Series C), Digantara ($50M Series B), EtherealX ($21M Series A), Bellatrix Aerospace ($20M Series A), and AgniKul Cosmos ($17M Series C)—collectively contributed $158M, accounting for more than half of the capital raised across 2025 and 2026.

Seed-stage funding increased from $7M in 2022 to $62M in 2025, while late-stage funding emerged for the first time, reaching $17M in 2025 and $53M in 2026 YTD. The investor base has also expanded from domestic venture capital firms and angel investors to sovereign wealth funds and global institutional investors.

Bengaluru Leads India’s SpaceTech Ecosystem with More Than Half of Sector Funding

The top 10 funded companies have collectively raised more than $548M, led by Skyroot Aerospace ($150M), Pixxel ($96M), AgniKul Cosmos ($76M), Digantara ($67M), and Bellatrix Aerospace ($34M). Skyroot became India’s first SpaceTech unicorn following its $50M Series C in May 2026, while Pixxel, AgniKul Cosmos, and Digantara have also attracted significant funding.

Bengaluru leads with $495M across 106 rounds, followed by Hyderabad ($205M) and Chennai ($80M). Together, these three cities account for the majority of equity funding raised by India’s private SpaceTech ecosystem.

You can find Tracxn’s reports on their website.

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Tracxn, a global market intelligence platform for private company data, released its India Climate Tech 2026 Report, a comprehensive analysis of an ecosystem where climate action is increasingly tied to India’s energy-security and industrial priorities. 

The report examines how funding activity, company formation, investor participation, and policy are developing across India’s climate-tech ecosystem, drawing on Tracxn’s coverage of the sector. It identifies where capital is concentrating, which segments are drawing the widest participation, and how a maturing policy framework is shaping the opportunities available to founders and investors.

Highlights

• India’s climate-tech companies have attracted approximately $12.8B and 1,583 funded companies, with annual funding rising from about $315M in 2020 to $2.6B in 2025.

• Policy, private capital and energy security are converging on the same sectors. With roughly 85% of India’s crude oil imported, renewable energy, electric mobility, batteries and critical minerals now serve both decarbonisation and energy-independence goals.

• Capital is consolidating into larger, conviction-led rounds, led by Inox Clean Energy’s $344M Series D (2026) and Erisha E Mobility’s $1B Series D (2025), with development finance institutions such as British International Investment, IFC and FMO actively participating.

• Renewable Energy Tech leads cumulative funding at $1.5B, while Solid Waste Management ($477M), Energy Efficiency ($352M), Air Pollution Management ($237M) and Water & Wastewater Management ($208M) show the opportunity broadening across the ecosystem.

• 2026 YTD funding stands at $791M across 74 rounds, with 66% of funding concentrated in just 5 late-stage rounds, signalling a flight to conviction-led plays.

Policy, Capital and Energy Security Are Aligning

With roughly 85% of India’s crude oil imported, the same technologies — renewable energy, electric mobility, batteries and critical minerals — increasingly address energy security alongside climate goals, giving the investment case two reinforcing drivers. India’s climate-policy framework has moved from supporting technology adoption to building the conditions for large-scale deployment. PM E-DRIVE, a ₹10,900 crore programme extended to 2028, supports electric-vehicle adoption and charging infrastructure; the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, effective October 2026, establishes a compliance carbon market covering around 490 industrial units across nine sectors; and the Rare Earth Permanent Magnets scheme, a ₹7,280 crore programme, strengthens domestic clean-energy supply chains. 

Funding Has Scaled and Is Concentrating in Larger Rounds

Annual funding rose from about $315M in 2020 to $2.6B in 2025, with capital increasingly directed toward larger, conviction-led transactions in electric mobility, renewable energy and energy-transition infrastructure. Landmark rounds include Inox Clean Energy’s $344M Series D in 2026 and Erisha E Mobility’s $1B Series D in 2025. British International Investment participated in three rounds (Euler Motors, GreenCell Mobility and Ecofy), alongside IFC, FMO and Finnfund – reflecting sustained institutional confidence in India’s energy transition.

Renewable Energy Leads, With the Opportunity Broadening

Renewable Energy Tech leads cumulative funding at $1.5B, supported by the capital-intensive nature of renewable-energy and grid infrastructure, with Inox Clean Energy’s $344M Series D and $70M Series C among its notable rounds. Beyond generation, Solid Waste Management Tech ($477M), Energy Efficiency Tech ($352M), Air Pollution Management Tech ($237M) and Water & Wastewater Management Tech ($208M) have together attracted more than $1.2B, pointing to a widening opportunity across resource efficiency, environmental management and industrial sustainability.

As policy support, private capital and energy-security priorities increasingly point to the same set of technologies, India’s climate-tech market is positioned to deepen as well as grow.

2026 YTD: Fewer, Larger, More Conviction-Led Rounds

The first five months of 2026 reflect a market consolidating around scale and conviction, with $791M deployed across 74 rounds. Late-stage activity dominates at $524M across 5 deals, while seed funding stands at $61M across 44 rounds. Noida has emerged as the top funding city. Early-cycle signals remain selective, with 15 first-time funded companies, 6 new Soonicorns, 2 IPOs and 1 acquisition in YTD.

(00:00) Just the headlines, if you only have a minute

(01:26) The Polsky Center selects 20 Indian startups for first accelerator

The University of Chicago’s Polsky Center has named 20 startups to the first cohort of its India Deep Tech Accelerator, a global programme for IIT-affiliated ventures. The 10-week accelerator is designed to help founders turn research-heavy ideas into market-ready companies through workshops, coaching, and access to customers, partners and investors in India and the US.

The cohort spans AI, robotics, climate and energy, healthtech, semiconductors, space and industrial software. Selected companies include Adaapt, Augle.AI, BioSky Space Innovations, Curium Life, Folium Sensing, NXPEC Technologies, Timble AI and Zodhya Technologies.

(02:20) C-CAMP opens applications for NBEC 2026

C-CAMP has opened applications for the 9th National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition, a platform for bio-entrepreneurs, startups, student teams, researchers and innovators in the life sciences. The programme will offer mentorship, industry exposure and funding support, with selected startups and individuals eligible for cash prizes and investment opportunities of up to INR 20 crore.

Student teams can win up to INR 10 lakh, and shortlisted applicants will attend a two-day bootcamp led by experts from IIM Ahmedabad. The competition was launched by Karnataka IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge at C-CAMP.

(03:15) IIT Madras opens California hub for Indian deep-tech startups

IIT Madras Global Research Foundation has launched its first US centre in Menlo Park, California, to help Indian deep-tech startups scale internationally. The hub, established with CA Startups, will focus on research, startup incubation, commercialisation and access to global capital, markets and partnerships.

The project carries a planned investment of $7.5 million, including a $4.5 million greenfield investment from IITM Global. The centre is positioned near Silicon Valley and is intended to strengthen India–US innovation ties, with a second US centre planned for the East Coast.

(04:02) IIT Bombay launches India’s first CCUS field lab

IIT Bombay has inaugurated an integrated pilot facility for carbon capture, utilisation and storage, marking India’s first end-to-end CCUS field laboratory. The project combines an indigenous carbon capture plant with geological CO2 sequestration in Deccan basalt formations, and was launched by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan under the Bharat Innovates 2026 initiative.

The institute said the facility uses a patented aqueous CO2 capture technology and is meant to support India’s long-term net-zero goals through a self-reliant carbon mitigation model.

(04:49) Government maps climate risk in 651 farm districts

The Centre has assessed climate vulnerability across 651 predominantly agricultural districts and found 310 to be at risk, including 109 classified as very highly vulnerable and 201 as highly vulnerable. The assessment, carried out under ICAR’s National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture programme using IPCC protocols, is being used to scale up climate-resilient farming practices, district agriculture contingency plans and farmer support measures across India.

ICAR has also expanded climate-resilient technologies through model villages, KVKs and training programmes, while the government is promoting crop insurance, water-efficient irrigation and resilient seed varieties to help farmers cope with droughts, floods and heat stress.

(05:52) India’s clean energy transition bolsters economic resilience

Clean energy transition is now central to India’s economic resilience and growth strategy, Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Pralhad Joshi said at the CII Green Business Summit 2026. He highlighted that India has achieved 47 percent of its power capacity from non-fossil sources, ahead of schedule for the 2030 target of 50 percent, with renewables growing at 15.4 percent annually against 4.1 percent for fossil fuels.

Minister Joshi emphasised investments in green hydrogen, battery storage and nuclear energy as key to energy security and net-zero goals by 2070.

(06:41) Flo Mobility raises $2.5 million in pre-Series A

Bengaluru-based construction robotics startup Flo Mobility has raised $2.5 million in a pre-Series A round co-led by Mela Ventures and Arali Ventures. The funding will scale manufacturing, enhance its AI and autonomy stack, expand deployments across India and enter international markets, particularly the Middle East.

The company builds autonomous robots for material movement on construction sites, addressing labour shortages and improving efficiency. Flo Mobility’s robots are already deployed across 10 Indian states with clients including Larsen & Toubro, Godrej Properties and Sobha.

(07:28) HrdWyr raises $13 million Series A to build AI-native chipsRamamurthy Sivakumar and Ganesh Guruswamy, founders of HrdWyr, have just announced a $13 million Series A investment led by Indeaspring Capital. Image courtesy: Sivakumar.

Eka Robotics has emerged from stealth with a Vision-Force-Action model that it says can push robots beyond the long-standing trade-off between generality and speed in manipulation tasks. The Cambridge, Massachusetts startup was co-founded in 2025 by MIT’s Pulkit Agrawal and former DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja. The deep tech entrepreneurs are pitching force sensing and simulation as the route to more capable machines.

In robotics, much of the recent excitement has centred on vision-language-action systems, which treat language as a bridge to physical control. Eka says that is too indirect for the contact-rich realities of the physical world. Its approach instead tries to make robots learn mass, friction and inertia through practice in high-fidelity simulation, then transfer those skills to the messier settings of factories and homes.

Across the robotics industry, the race is on to build foundation models that can scale across tasks, rather than brittle systems tuned for one environment, and the prize is a larger share of warehouse work, light manufacturing and household assistance. The strategic question is whether the winning path is imitation from human data, reinforcement learning in the real world, or simulation-first training that seeks to compress years of trial and error into computational time.

“We’re building intelligence for the physical world in its native language: forces,” Pulkit Agrawal wrote on LinkedIn. In the same post, he added that robotics has long faced a trade-off between “generality” and “speed,” and that “the real world requires both”.

Eka’s presentation suggests confidence that force-aware control can do more than sort objects or pick up toys. The company has highlighted tasks such as screwing in a light bulb and handling slippery items, small feats that still define the frontier of robotic manipulation. For now, the message is as important as the model: the next leap in robotics, Eka is arguing, will come not from making machines more verbal, but from making them more physical.

Ati Motors has renamed itself Ati Robotics to better reflect its evolution into a “material orchestration” specialist, the Bengaluru-based provider of autonomous mobile robots said in a recent press release.

The Indian robotics company is moving to win an early lead in this industry-wide shift: the world’s biggest manufacturers, including some of Ati’s customers, are looking at not just deploying robots anymore, but at holistic automation and AI-led solutions that make their overall operations more efficient.

Top manufacturing and factory executives are beginning to understand that in the modern industrial landscape, a machine that moves autonomously isn’t in itself the goal. It’s how one can harness the combination of many such robots, the multiple processes in the factory and the dynamically changing roles of the humans involved to get closer to a “lights out” facility.

“Automation doesn’t stop at the robot,” Founder and CEO Saurabh Chandra, said in the press release, adding the company has built an integrated platform comprising robots, fleet intelligence, AI agents, and the orchestration software that ties them all to the systems running modern factories.

“Ati Robotics is not a new company. It is the honest description of the company we have already become,” Chandra said.

By adopting a name that encompasses its broader ambitions in artificial intelligence and systems orchestration, Ati Robotics is signalling that its own future lies not in the hardware of locomotion, but in the software of intelligence.

Ati was founded in 2017, and has its roots in India’s top scientific research university, the Indian Institute of Science. The company’s Sherpa line of AMRs (tuggers, pallet lifters and so on) have been deployed with more than 70 enterprise customers, and the robots have tracked some 2 million autonomous missions with a success rate of 99 percent, according to the release.

The shift to material orchestration is a necessary one, driven by a chronic shortage of skilled labor and a desperate need for efficiency in the face of fragmented supply chains. Manufacturers want to move away from the “yellow cages” of fixed robotics toward flexible, autonomous systems that can navigate human-centric environments.

For companies such as Ati, this means the competition has shifted from basic hardware reliability to the sophistication of the “digital brains” that can manage fleets — often comprising many different types of robots.

For startups and incumbents alike, the challenge is no longer just making a robot that can carry a pallet, but creating a system that can rethink how that pallet moves in real-time.

One immediate opportunity is the so-called brownfield facility — an existing factory with sunk investments in human-centric infrastructure and equipment. The best solution that can integrate the existing gear effectively at minimal cost will win.

“Customers don’t just buy a robot from us. They buy a material orchestration system – coordination, intelligence, and scalability aligned to how their factory actually works,” says Chris Dolbow, vice president of marketing at Ati. “The shift to Ati Robotics sharpens how we describe what we deliver: the right fit for automation today with intelligent innovation for the future.”

Ati is backed by investors including Walden Catalyst Ventures, NGP Capital and its early-stage investor MFV Partners. The Bengaluru-headquartered company is moving to build on its momentum in the competitive North American and APAC markets. It has also already successfully deployed its orchestration solution at some early customers, CEO Chandra says.

The transition to a low-carbon economy is often framed as a struggle resulting from a combination of engineering challenges and lack of political willpower. A new vision paper argues that the true bottleneck is an information deficit. The Climate and Sustainability Data Exchange (CSDX), a proposed universal digital infrastructure, seeks to move beyond “siloed, project-level fixes” to provide the “shared rails” necessary for a planetary-scale coordination system.

The CSDX vision paper is the result of a collaboration between StepChange and Beckn. StepChange, a climate-tech venture in Bengaluru founded by MIT alumni Ankit Jain and Sidhant Pai, provides a strategic framework for managing ESG, carbon accounting, and climate risk.

Beckn, now called Network for Humanities (NFH, previously the Beckn Foundation), is an international network of labs focused on building open, interoperable digital infrastructure for population-scale systems. It offers the eponymous Beckn protocol, a foundational open protocol that enables interoperable, decentralized digital interactions without reliance on central platforms.

It was co-founded in 2019 by Nandan Nilekani, founding chairman of Aadhaar, India’s Unique ID Authority, Pramod Varma, Aadhaar’s former chief architect, and Sujith Nair, who also serves as its Steward, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The current landscape of sustainability data is a thicket of fragmented portals and manual entries, particularly in the Global South, where information is “limited in quality, expensive to access, and fragile in trust,” the authors of the paper say. Without a common language, capital is frequently mispriced, and the progress of supply chains remains invisible to the regulators and financiers who might otherwise reward decarbonization, they add.

StepChange and Beckn envision a neutral alliance of core members who will act as stewards for the infrastructure, maintaining common schemas and onboarding policies to keep the digital rails accessible and transparent. By combining their technological and environmental expertise, the collaboration seeks to create a federated network where producers, financiers, and regulators can exchange trusted sustainability data at near-zero marginal cost.

The proposal arrives as global climate-driven disaster costs surpass $400 billion annually and energy-related CO₂ emissions have climbed to an all-time high of 37.8 gigatonnes. With atmospheric concentrations now 50 percent higher than pre-industrial levels, the CSDX initiative aims to standardize the reporting of ESG, carbon accounting, and climate risk to bridge the “data-poor” gap that currently prevents global markets from pricing resilience accurately.

“Like railways, container shipping, or the internet, CSDX provides a minimal, interoperable digital rail that allows any actor to publish and pull records in a common language, at near-zero marginal cost,” StepChange and NFH say.

• ESG Management captures the broad set of non-financial outcomes enterprises create across environment, society, and governance.

• Carbon Accounting provides a rigorous, quantifiable subset of environmental impacts with unique salience for decarbonization.

• Climate Risk ensures that external climate dynamics are translated into financial terms, enabling efficient capital allocation and resilience planning.

Using the Beckn protocol, CSDX envisions a federated architecture where data is “governed at source while becoming globally discoverable.” By aligning with global frameworks like the ISSB and CSRD, the platform ensures that “water-withdrawal intensity,” for example, or “Scope 3” emissions mean the same thing to a textile factory in Nairobi as they do to a bank in Frankfurt.

This is not merely an exercise in corporate disclosure; it is an attempt to create a “functioning control system for the real economy,” where sustainability is embedded into every purchase order and loan decision.

Note:
This copy was updated to include the names of StepChange’s founders, the network NFH, and correct Sujith Nair’s designation.

Tracxn Technologies, a leading private markets intelligence provider in India, has released its latest report on India’s startup landscape — as at the end of the fiscal year 2025-26.

Press release

Key highlights

• $11.7B raised across 1,632 rounds — deal volume fell 34% but total capital fell only 18%.

• Median cheque size grew substantially, confirming that investors are concentrating capital rather than retreating from the market.

• Early-stage funding rose 33% to $4.8B even as early-stage rounds fell from 492 to 420.

• Fewer companies attracted larger Series A and B rounds — a barometer of rising quality thresholds at the growth stage.

• 47 IPOs in FY 2025-26, up 52% from 31 the prior year. India’s public markets absorbed the most tech listings in a decade, with Lenskart, Groww, Meesho, Physics Wallah, and Pine Labs among the notable debutants.

• Six new unicorns formed in FY 2025-26 — up 50% year-on-year — and reached billion-dollar valuations on an average of $150M raised, nearly half the $294M required by the prior cohort.

• 74% of India-focused VCs expect conditions to improve in 2026, with AI/ML and Deep Tech as top priorities — and talent shortages, not capital, as the chief execution risk.

Bengaluru, 21st April 2026: Tracxn, a leading startup intelligence and market data platform, today released the Tracxn Geo Annual

Report: India Tech FY 2025-26, providing the most comprehensive data-backed review of India’s startup funding, exits, unicorn formation, and investor activity for the financial year ending 31 March 2026.

India retained its position as the world’s fourth-highest funded startup ecosystem, behind only the United States, United Kingdom, and China, accounting for $11.7B deployed across 1,632

Rounds.

The headline funding figure masks a more important structural story: deal volume compression is running far ahead of funding compression, reflecting an investor base that is making fewer, higher-conviction bets rather than retreating from the market altogether.

Commenting on the insights, Neha Singh, Co-Founder of Tracxn, said, “The FY 2025-26 data tells a story of deliberate recalibration. When deal volume falls 34% but funding fell only 18%, it means investors aren’t leaving — they’re choosing differently. The surge in IPO activity and the 50% rise in new unicorn formation all point to an ecosystem that is growing up: more focused, more fundamentals-driven, and increasingly capable of generating durable value rather than just headline valuations.”

Capital Is Concentrating, Not Retreating

India’s $11.7B represented an 18% decline from $14.3B the prior financial year, but a 20% increase over FY 2023-24’s trough. Early-stage funding grew 33% to $4.8B despite fewer rounds; late-stage fell 38%. Enterprise Applications ($3.6B), FinTech ($2.4B), and Retail ($2.4B) led sectors. The year’s largest rounds — Nxtra ($710M), Neysa ($600M), and Inox Clean Energy ($344M) — signal that India’s most capital-intensive opportunities lie in foundational infrastructure.

Public Markets Come of Age

FY 2025-26 produced 47 tech IPOs — a 52% year-on-year increase and the highest count in the India Tech ecosystem. Notable listings and their respective market capitalisations at the time of IPO included Lenskart ($7.9B), Groww ($7.0B), Meesho ($5.6B), Physics Wallah ($3.6B) — collectively representing some of India’s most prominent VC-backed success stories reaching public scale.

The sector composition of FY 2025-26 IPOs shifted markedly from the prior financial year: Retail led with 15 listings and Enterprise Applications followed with 11, compared to Transportation & Logistics Tech leading in FY 2024-25. Late-stage IPOs rose from 36% to 44% of equity-funded listings, reflecting investor preference for scaled, revenue-generating businesses.

Unicorns: Faster, Leaner, More Capital-Efficient

Six new unicorns emerged in FY 2025-26 — Neysa, Raise, Navi, Jumbotail, JSW One MSME, and Juspay — a 50% increase over the four formed in FY 2024-25. India’s cumulative unicorn count now stands at 125, positioning it as the world’s third-largest unicorn ecosystem. Bengaluru (53) and Mumbai (20) and Gurugram (20) account for over 74% of all unicorns. Of 94 private unicorns with available financials, only 17 are currently profitable, underscoring that margin discipline, not just revenue scale, will define the next phase of the ecosystem.

What India’s Investors Are Signalling for 2026

A survey of ~30 India-focused VC investors found 74% expect conditions to improve in 2026, with AI/ML and Deep Tech tied as top sector priorities (71% each), and Vertical AI (79%) and Enterprise AI (54%) as preferred deployment categories — signalling that the next growth phase will be defined by where intelligence gets embedded, not just deployed.

(00:22) Microsoft clarifies stance on carbon credits purchases

Microsoft issued a clarification after reports earlier this month that it had informed carbon credit developers of a temporary halt in new purchases. That news, reported first by Heatmap News, had caused immediate ripples in the carbon removal sector, as Microsoft has been the market’s dominant force, representing roughly 90 percent of global durable carbon removal purchases in 2025.

Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa clarified that the “carbon removal program has not ended,” according to reports including those from ESG Dive and ESG Today. The company remains committed to its goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030.

(01:20) Fission startup X-energy files for $800 million IPO

Nuclear energy startup X-energy has officially launched its investor roadshow, filing for an initial public offering to raise up to $800 million, TechCrunch reports. The Maryland-based company is targeting a valuation of approximately $7.5 billion, with shares priced between $16 and $19.

(02:13) Inertia partners US national lab to commercialise fusion science

Inertia Enterprises has signed a landmark strategic partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to transition experimental fusion science into a commercial energy source. The collaboration includes a licensing agreement for nearly 200 patents and joint research focused on scaling the laser-driven technology used to achieve “ignition” at the National Ignition Facility.

(03:30) Battery recycler Ascend Elements files for bankruptcy

Ascend Elements, a leading U.S. battery recycling startup, has officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to address a critical liquidity crisis, MLQ.ai reports. Despite raising over $500 million from high-profile investors like Honda and SK On, the company faced insurmountable financial pressure from plummeting lithium-ion material prices and significant construction delays at its primary facilities.

(04:47) US Department of Energy restores $1.2 billion for carbon removal

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has reversed its decision to cancel funding for major climate initiatives, restoring support for carbon direct air capture (DAC) projects previously awarded under the Biden administration, World Energy News reports. The move, confirmed in a report to Congress, ensures that nearly 2,000 projects will retain their funding after a period of intense review by the current administration.

(05:37) India officially withdraws bid to host UN climate summit in 2028

The Indian government has formally rescinded its offer to host the 33rd United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP33) in 2028, Reuters reports. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed the withdrawal after a press briefing on Friday last, stating that “several issues” were considered following a review of the country’s commitments for that year.

(06:26) Steel emissions reduction target

India’s own efforts continue, towards meeting its target of hitting net zero by 2070. The Indian government has drafted a comprehensive National Steel Policy roadmap aiming to double the nation’s crude steel capacity to 400 million tonnes by 2035-36. According to internal documents and recent ministry briefings at the Bharat Steel 2026 summit, this expansion will be paired with a mandatory 25% reduction in carbon emissions intensity, Reuters reported earlier this month.

(07:37) World Bank shareholders seek solution to preserve climate strategy

International shareholders of the World Bank, led by France, are urgently seeking ways to maintain the lender’s climate change financing strategy after its official expiration in June, Reuters reports. French development minister Éléonore Caroit stated during the IMF-World Bank spring meetings in Washington that letting the current action plan lapse is “unacceptable.”

India has rewritten the rulebook for startups in the country, carving out a separate deep‑tech category with a longer recognition window and higher turnover ceiling in a move aimed at research‑heavy, capital‑intensive ventures.

In a gazette notification dated February 4, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) said deep‑tech startups recognised under the Startup India framework will be eligible for benefits for up to 20 years from incorporation, twice the 10‑year limit that continues to apply to other startups. The annual turnover cap for such entities has been set at Rs. 300 crore.

The notification replaces the 2019 definition of a startup and, for the first time, provides a formal policy definition of what counts as “deep tech”.  DPIIT describes deep‑tech startups as entities building solutions rooted in new scientific or engineering knowledge, with high research‑and‑development intensity, ownership or creation of novel intellectual property, long development timelines and substantial technical uncertainty.

Sectors explicitly cited in government and industry commentary include artificial intelligence and associated infrastructure, semiconductors, space, biotechnology, new materials, energy and quantum technologies.

Governments from Washington to Brussels and Beijing have been racing to update startup and industrial‑policy regimes to court deep‑tech founders, whose capital needs and time horizons sit awkwardly with standard venture‑capital cycles. Europe has launched targeted deep‑tech funds, while America has used instruments such as the CHIPS and Science Act to back strategic technologies; China continues to marshal state support for advanced manufacturing and hard tech.

India has recently launched a research, development and innovation fund of Rs. 100,000 crore.

The move to extend recognition to 20 years and raise the turnover threshold is cast in Delhi as an attempt to signal that the government is prepared to match the longer gestation of frontier technologies with a more patient policy framework at the highest levels.

“This is a decisive and forward‑looking move by the government. By formally recognising deep‑tech startups and giving them a longer runway, India is aligning policy with the realities of science‑led innovation,” Vishesh Rajaram, founding partner at the well know deep tech VC firm Speciale Invest, said in an emailed statement.

“It sends a clear signal that the country is serious about building IP‑driven deep‑tech companies from India for the world—and gives founders and investors the confidence to commit long‑term capital to that journey,” Rajaram added.

Beyond timelines and turnover, the revised framework also tweaks the scope of who can qualify as a startup under the scheme. Cooperative societies are now eligible alongside companies and LLPs, broadening access to benefits, while regular startups retain a 10‑year recognition window and see their turnover cap raised from Rs. 100 crore to Rs. 200 crore.

DPIIT will continue to process applications through its portal, but deep‑tech ventures must furnish additional evidence of scientific novelty, R&D spend and IP creation to qualify for the extended treatment.

“India just gave deep tech a real policy home and BYT Capital welcomes DPIIT’s new Deep Tech Startup definition (4 Feb 2026), a timely step that aligns policy with the realities of frontier innovation,” Amit Chand, founder of BYT Capital, an early stage deep tech VC firm in Bengaluru, said in an emailed statement.

“By extending startup recognition for eligible deep‑tech ventures to 20 years and raising the turnover threshold to Rs. 300 crore, this policy doesn’t just add a label, it improves time horizons, capital efficiency, and investability for deep‑tech in India,” Chand said.

He added: “This is a meaningful step toward making India more ‘fundable’ for frontier innovation because policy timelines now look closer to deep‑tech timelines”.