Tech deals: Amogy, Uncaged Innovations, Werewool biotech firms announce funding rounds

Stephanie Downs, CEO of Uncaged Innovations, which creates leather in a lab.

Startups are continuing to place bets that their innovations can address climate change and make the most of government incentives and regulations, from the federal Inflation Reduction Act to fashion-industry sustainability pushes. Three biotechnology companies that have announced funding rounds in the last several weeks address core ecological issues from headquarters in New York City.

FUNDING DETAILS $2 million pre-seed

INVESTORS InMotion Ventures, VegInvest, Stray Dog Capital, Alwyn Capital, Hack Capital, and GlassWalls Syndicate

HEADQUARTERS Harlem and White Plains

CO-FOUNDERS Stephanie Downs

Sustainable leather can simplify the supply chain, not just for consumer goods like handbags but also for use in cars. Uncaged Innovations’ CEO Stephanie Downs is overseeing the lab-based creation of next-generation materials that recreate animal skin. The pre-seed funding round will go to refining the technology and testing various vegan leathers to bring them to market. The company has already received a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grant to develop its technology. "The current market landscape for alternative leathers relies heavily on plastic-based materials," Downs said in a statement. "Our technology platform enables us to fuse biodegradable elements that each provide unique characteristics, such as texture, strength, flexibility, water resistance, color, and fragrance. We can tune our formulation to meet different performance specifications." Downs said that the company had plenty of runway and had used just 1% of its previous funding so far, giving the firm "a competitive edge over our competitors."

FUNDING DETAILS $11 million Series B-2

INVESTORS Marunouchi Climate Tech Growth Fund

HEADQUARTERS Brooklyn Navy Yard

CO-FOUNDERS Hyunho Kim, Seonghoon Woo, Jongwon Choi, Young Suk Jo

Amogy has been raising money at a steady clip as the company readies its technology to hit the market. The company's thesis is that the movement of goods across oceans and continents isn't going to stop any time soon, so it makes sense to focus on replacing oil that powers container ships and tractor-trailers with a fuel that emits less carbon. The company's leadership team developed a reactor to turn liquid ammonia—a common agricultural chemical—into electricity by breaking it down into its parts, nitrogen and hydrogen. Amogy has already powered a truck, and is racing to demonstrate how its fuel can propel a container ship before launching its first commercial product in 2024. The bridge round ends the company's quest to raise its pre-commercialization Series B and represents the "rapidly increasing global interest in our technology and its potential to change the world, taking us one step closer to ammonia-driven decarbonization of heavy industries," said Seonghoon Woo, the company's CEO. The investment marks the first check from a new climate-tech fund whose parent company is Japan-based Mitsubishi Corporation, according to a press release.

FUNDING DETAILS $3.7 million seed

INVESTORS Material Impact and Sofinnova Partners

HEADQUARTERS Prospect Lefferts Garden

CO-FOUNDERS Chui-Lian Lee, Theanne Schiros, Valentina Gomez, Morgana Kattermann

A 2018 project at the Fashion Institute of Technology evolved into this early-stage company that produces biodegradable, colorful fibers that can be turned into fabrics, as an alternative to synthetic and petroleum-based materials. "Our mission as a company is to make the fashion industry compatible with nature," said Chui-Lian Lee, co-founder and CEO of Werewool, in a statement. The textile industry contributes to large-scale pollution problems, according to the company's release, including the production of so-called microplastics which taint natural environmental and human bodies.

The company's co-founders share its patent with both FIT and Columbia University and are now based at the Downstate University Tech @ 710's Incubator space; Werewool is also one of the members of the New Lab cohort of the New York City Economic Development Corporation's Founder Fellowship program. The firm plans to put the funding toward expanding manufacturing capabilities and growing its team, with a goal of having fibers ready to sell in the next 18 months.