According to Katapult, the 13 companies taking part in the fourth and final programme for the fund represent the “most technically advanced and commercially mature” group of startups to date, with an average valuation of €25m.
Katapult Ocean, the Nordic impact investor focused on ocean tech startups, has announced the latest cohort of companies to join the Katapult Ocean Deep Blue Fund accelerator programme.
A total investment of more than €4m is being made into the 13 companies selected for the programme, with ticket sizes ranging from €150,000 to €500,000. This is the fourth and final programme which will be run through the $50m (€42.9m) fund, which now holds 53 early-stage companies globally.
Speaking to Impact Investor, Anthony Bellafiore, investment manager at Katapult Ocean, said: “We invest in every company that goes through our programme and our fund model is to invest early and often in the seed to seed plus stages. We also reserve quite a significant portion of our fund for follow-on investments into companies that have gone through our programme.”
Bellafiore said all the investments would be assessed for a follow-on ticket roughly 12 to 24 months after initial investment. To date, the fund has made seven follow-on investments, which include companies from its previous accelerator cohorts as well as from investments made through other Katapult Ocean funds.
Katapult Ocean manages five ocean-focused impact investment funds including the recently launched Asia Ocean Fund, which it co-manages with Singapore-based OCTAVE Capital.
Technically advanced
According to Katapult Ocean, this year’s cohort represents the fund’s “most technically advanced and commercially mature group” of startups to date, with an average valuation of €25m and the vast majority of companies preparing to scale solutions with customers worldwide.
“We are in the final year of deployment for the Katapult Deep Blue Fund 1 and because of the shorter return horizon, we decided to target slightly later-stage companies, which have lower paths to exit than in the past,” he explained.
As well as direct investment, the three-month accelerator programme will include tailored workshops, intensive leadership development, and access to a network of mentors, customers, and investors, with the first month devoted to impact strategy, measurement, and ESG, which Katapult Ocean says will help founders embed rigorous impact management alongside commercial growth.
Economic benefit bias
Bellafiore said there was more of a bias in this year’s cohort towards companies that could demonstrate a clear economic benefit for their customers in addition to providing an environmental or societal impact.
“In these politically tumultuous times, in which we have seen governments renege on grants to certain sectors such as renewables, there has been a pull back from investors and customers wary of the fact that sustainability is no longer at the top of the agenda in terms of non-dilutive support and regulation,” he said.
“So, more than ever, there’s a real need to focus on companies whose sustainable solutions also provide a clear economic incentive for adoption,” he added.
Five impact areas
Since 2018, Katapult Ocean has accelerated over 90 companies across themes including maritime decarbonisation, aquaculture and food systems, renewable ocean energy, circular materials, and ocean data and robotics.
“In this year’s cohort we have companies like California-based Ammobia, whose technology is poised to drastically reduce the costs of green ammonia production as a potential alternative fuel for the maritime sector, among others. In the area of circular resources, which can be anything from bio-plastics to ocean carbon dioxide removal, we have companies like Birch Biosciences,” said Bellafiore.
Birch Biosciences is another American company which has developed next-generation recycling technology that uses AI-designed enzymes to make plastic recycling more economical and circular.
Bellafiore said food, and water in particular, is another “really big point of emphasis” this year.
“There is a lot of water pollution from microplastics and PFAS,” he said referring to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as ‘forever chemicals’ – toxic chemicals which do not break down naturally in the environment.
“One of the companies this year, Aquagga, has developed a technology which has found a way to weaponise water to break down these chemicals without producing harmful biproducts. Aquagga is able to achieve this breakdown with significantly less energy, cost, and complexity than other existing technologies” he added.
Another water company is Aquaria, which has developed air-to-water generators able to harvest humidity directly from the atmosphere to produce thousands of gallons of drinking water per month without pipelines, heavy construction, or long lead times.
“We are projecting having a 40% supply-demand gap by 2030 in fresh water. Municipalities in drought-stricken states in the US, like Texas, have been sending letters to their constituents saying they can no longer guarantee access to fresh water 365 days a year. That’s pretty scary,” Bellafiore said, adding that part of Katapult Ocean’s goal, alongside backing sustainable solutions that look to prevent such scenarios, is to support companies creating “accessible resilience” for the communities facing them.
