Windfall Bio Raises $28 Million Series A to Scale Methane Capture & Transformation Solution
Led by Prelude Ventures with participation from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and others, capital will support the path to commercialization for Windfall’s nature-based solution across methane intensive industries
April 08, 2024 05:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time
MENLO PARK, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Windfall Bio, a leader in methane-to-value solutions, announced its $28 million Series A funding round led by Prelude Ventures with participation from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Global Brain (through its Norinchukin Innovation Fund L.P.), Incite Ventures, and Positive Ventures. Existing investors also participated in the round, including B37 Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mayfield, and UNTITLED (a fund backed by the Tetra Laval family). Supporting its commercial pipeline, the new capital will enable Windfall to expand pilot deployments across methane intensive industries including agriculture, oil and gas, and waste management. Windfall will also invest resources to continue building out its team, manufacturing capacity and supply chain to meet growing global customer demand for methane mitigation solutions.
“However, methane represents an important resource that can create significant value for customers if they are given the right tools. We’ve seen early commercial traction and with the support of our strategic investors, Windfall will empower customers across industries to eliminate harmful methane emissions and create valuable outputs in return.”
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is 86x more warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled since preindustrial times and emissions from manmade and natural sources continue to accelerate. Methane contributes to 30 percent of the planet’s warming, and capturing these emissions is a unique opportunity to reduce global emissions quickly and significantly, especially as market demand and regulatory pressures mount. Windfall’s solution addresses this by capturing methane for a low, all-in cost while producing on-site, high quality fertilizer for customers to use or sell.
“While addressing methane emissions is the most impactful strategy available today to tackle near-term climate change, it has remained a critically underappreciated and underfunded problem for global warming, only recently gaining significant attention in climate discussions,” said Josh Silverman, co-founder and CEO of Windfall Bio. “However, methane represents an important resource that can create significant value for customers if they are given the right tools. We’ve seen early commercial traction and with the support of our strategic investors, Windfall will empower customers across industries to eliminate harmful methane emissions and create valuable outputs in return.”
Windfall’s nature-based solution harnesses methane-eating microbes—referred to as mems—that capture methane from any source while also capturing nitrogen from the air to produce organic fertilizer on customers’ sites. For agriculture and industrial customers, mems create value by improving soil health, enabling emissions tracking and reporting, improving resource efficiency, and generating new revenue streams from the sale of organic fertilizer.
“Windfall Bio’s approach to methane mitigation creates an exciting greenhouse gas emissions reduction opportunity for agricultural customers and other industries,” said Nick Ellis at Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund. “We look forward to piloting Windfall Bio with our Whole Foods Market suppliers, and delivering results together in the coming years.”
“Windfall Bio is a cost effective and simple methane mitigation solution that increases the efficiency, profitability, and sustainability of methane emitting industries. Uniquely, Windfall’s approach can rapidly scale globally across large industries to meaningfully reduce methane emissions,” said Mark Cupta, Managing Director at Prelude Ventures.
Windfall exited stealth in March 2023 with a $9 million seed raise. The Series A funding brings the company’s total fundraising amount to $37 million and further validates the need and promise for its methane mitigation solution across multiple industries. The Series A builds on several milestones the company achieved in the last year, including building out its executive team and Board of Advisors to support Windfall’s go-to-market strategy and being named one of Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech, highlighting its technology as one that will shape the future of methane mitigation.
About Windfall Bio
Windfall Bio has developed the first-ever solution to capture and transform climate-harming methane emissions into organic fertilizer. This nature-based solution harnesses methane-eating microbes to transform methane from any source into valuable outputs. The company’s solution allows methane emitters across industries, such as agriculture, oil and gas, and waste management, to reduce their carbon footprint, as well as enables farmers to improve their profitability and environmental impact. Founded in 2022 and based in Menlo Park, CA, Windfall Bio is venture-backed by top-tier firms including Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, B37 Ventures, Baruch Future Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Cavallo Ventures, Global Brain (through its Norinchukin Innovation Fund L.P.), Incite Ventures, MCJ Collective, Mayfield, Positive Ventures, and UNTITLED (a fund backed by the Tetra Laval family). To learn more about how Windfall Bio turns a climate and business woe into a windfall, visit www.windfall.bio.
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