Register for SOSV Climate Tech Summit – Nov 3-7, 2025 (Virtual, Free). Learn More

Back
Announcing the First Breakout Sessions at the 5th Annual SOSV Climate Tech Summit
Back
Kira Colburn
Kira Colburn
October 1, 2025

We’re excited to announce the first tranche of breakout sessions at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit. Alongside our main stage programming (full agenda coming soon!), these interactive sessions are designed to dive deeper into the most urgent challenges and opportunities facing climate tech founders, investors, and policymakers.

This year’s lineup highlights practical lessons, founder stories, and emerging categories across the ecosystem – from scaling first-of-a-kind technologies to navigating exits and understanding the risks of oversized capital rounds.

These are just the first of many breakout sessions we’ll be announcing in the weeks ahead.

👉 Register for each breakout individually to save your spot!

Vibe Coding in the World of Atoms

Monday, November 3 at 10:00 am PT
Presented by Pale Blue Dot

Sometimes the biggest wins aren’t from breakthrough tech, but from simple, practical apps that connect people in the physical world. This session will talk through how replacing clunky internal processes and tools with streamlined solutions can unlock more efficient and cost-effective outcomes in industries that have long been stuck with the status quo.

Speaker: Hampus Jakobsson, General Partner, Pale Blue Dot

REGISTER

Who Buys the Future? Exits in Climate Tech

Monday, November 3 at 5:00 pm PT
Presented by SOSV

Even from the earliest stages of a startup’s development, it’s important for founders to keep possible exits in view and to prepare accordingly. SOSV’s resident exit expert, general partner Cyril Ebersweiler, will present a 30-minute primer on exits specific to climate tech followed by 30 minutes of audience Q&A.

Speaker: Cyril Ebersweiler, General Partner, SOSV and Managing Director, HAX

REGISTER

Challenges and Successes in FOAK Funding & Scaling Climate Tech Globally

Tuesday, November 4 at 10:00 am PT
Presented by Khosla Ventures

Climate tech startups face some of the toughest funding hurdles, especially when building “first-of-a-kind” projects and scaling breakthrough technologies. In this session, Rajesh Swaminathan, partner at Khosla Ventures, will dive into how three pioneering founders have addressed these challenges: LanzaTech (carbon recycling, $1.3B in total funding), Fortera (low-carbon cement, $175.5M in total funding) and Mazama Energy (geothermal, $20M in total funding).

Speakers:

REGISTER

Why Climate-Tech Startups Need Techno-Economic Analysis

Tuesday, November 4 at 1:00 pm PT
Presented by Energy Impact Partners (EIP)

This session will dive into the dos and don’ts of techno-economic analysis (TEA), the power of simple models, and practical advice for startups. Dr. Melissa Ball, associate director of technology at EIP, whose work focuses on technical diligence for deep decarbonization, will give a brief presentation followed by audience Q&A.

Speaker: Dr. Melissa Ball, Associate Director of Technology at EIP

REGISTER

Commercializing the Difficult: Lessons from Carbon Tech Founders

Tuesday, November 4 at 11:00 am PT
Presented by Activate NY

What does it take to commercialize technology that the world once thought impossible? Co-founder of Twelve and interim managing director of Activate NY, Etosha Cave has seen how climate founders turn cutting-edge science into scalable businesses firsthand. This session will unpack real-world lessons from carbon tech: aligning science and markets, building credibility with investors, and seizing opportunities where climate urgency meets global demand.

Speaker: Etosha Cave, Managing Director, Activate NY

REGISTER

The Journey of an Electron: Deep Tech Opportunities in a Dynamic Energy Landscape

Tuesday, November 4 at 12:00 pm PT
Presented by TDK Ventures

How electrons are generated, stored, utilized, and optimized will define the future of energy. The conversation will follow “the journey of an electron,” tracing its path from generation to utilization and beyond. TDK Ventures’ global investment team will share insights on emerging trends across low-carbon generation, storage, data centers and compute, spotlighting promising startups and iconic entrepreneurs building the next generation of energy leaders.

Speakers:

REGISTER

Did you know?

How Ten63 turned an academic project into an AI platform for drugging “undruggable” cancers

Bruce Donald, Marcel Frenkel and Mark Hallen are analyzing over 19,290,123 compounds per second at quantum accuracies to develop drugs to previously incurable cancers.

unspun’s Weaving Machines Aim to Fix Apparel’s Waste and Carbon Problem

Funded with $57 million from DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital and SOSV, among others, unspun aims to eliminate 1% of global carbon emissions

NotCo’s plant-based foods are on store shelves, but its AI engine “Giuseppe” is the real business

While it might look like a plant-based food company, NotCo is in the data and AI business—and aims to disrupt R&D in many industries that use animal and plant ingredients.

Smartex is Creating the Textile Factory of the Future

Gilberto Loureiro grew up inspecting fabrics in a Portuguese textile factory. With Smartex, he and co-founders Antonio Rocha and Paulo Ribeiro are eliminating textile defects—and their enormous cost both to manufacturers and the environment.

Novoloop Is Upcycling Your Future

Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao have an uncanny talent for finding value where others see waste. Their plastics upcycling company, Novoloop, just raised an $21m Series A to prove it.

Upside Foods Serves Up a Sustainable Future

To find the future of food, you may have to look no further than Emeryville, CA, a small city by the San Francisco Bay, where Upside Foods has built a 53,000-square-foot production facility for cultivated meat, the first of its kind.

Sleeping Beauty

In a timeless dilemma for new parents, Radhika and her husband Bharath discovered early that their baby daughter was a fussy sleeper. The situation left them tired and frustrated; being effective at work became a challenge.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Entrepreneur

In December 2021 Prellis raised a $14.5 million Series B and has signed partnerships with pharmaceutical behemoths including Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi.

Chiu Chau Reboots a Robot into a Billion Dollar Business

It was 2016, and Chiu Chau was on the ropes. He had pitched nearly 150 venture capital firms. No one would invest. Everyone doubted the startup with the open-source laboratory robot.

RxAll’s Life-Saving Deep Tech for African Pharmacies

Adebayo (“Ade”) Alonge and Amy Kao, co-founders of RxAll had nvented a handheld scanner for detecting counterfeit prescription drugs—an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry that kills an estimated 1 million people annually globally and 100,000 in Africa.