Urban tech accelerator platform URBAN-X has selected nine start-ups from New York City, London, Israel, and Sweden to tackle cities’ toughest climate challenges. This is the platform’s 12th cohort, which it organises together with venture capital firm JVP. The nine start-ups selected will help drive greener urban manufacturing and urban planning, expand EV charging access, and improve surveying and monitoring of buildings.

Through the cohort’s four-month programme, start-ups will receive tailored trainings in ESG, go-to-market, storytelling, as well as seminars, and guidance from URBAN-X.

The list of URBAN-X Cohort 12 companies includes:

• ClimateView: Software development company for cities working on monitoring and visualisation tools for greenhouse gas emissions. (Stockholm, Sweden)
• Dryad: Provides ultra-early forest fire detection as well as health and growth monitoring solutions for public and private forests. (Berlin, Germany)
• factoRee: Focused on helping tens of thousands of factories better manage their emission-reduction processes by guiding COOs and site managers toward greener production processes and products, including using materials more efficiently, minimising energy and waste, and replacing raw materials and energy sources. (Tel Aviv, Israel)
• FunForm: Making building envelope retrofits simple and scalable. (New York)
• Gentian: Leverages remote sensing data and proprietary machine learning models to accelerate the speed of ecological surveying while drastically reducing cost. This allows for precise biodiversity assessments and monitoring in the development of the lifecycle buildings–an increasingly important aspect of real estate management. (London)
• itselectric: Scalable curbside EV charging purpose-built to accelerate the transition to electrified urban transportation. (New York City)
• Novele: Designs, manufactures, and sells energy storage solutions for dense urban environments. The first product, Energy Board, is an ultra-thin space saving energy storage solution designed for scaled applications in buildings of all types. (New York City)
• Seam Social Labs: Enterprise AI solution to transform community feedback to insights for urban planning and design teams. (New York City)
• Urban Dashboard: Replaces outdated practices and revolutionises the way real estate professionals plan their next projects with its data-driven SaaS platform for early-stage planning optimisation. (Tel Aviv, Israel)

The start-ups will also have the opportunity to work with major design, engineering, and brand experts to help them refine and scale their solutions for the commercial market, as well as access to JVP’s global network, which includes investors, industrial leaders, and other entrepreneurs.

Built by MINI in 2016, URBAN-X partners with start-ups to build technology solutions urban sustainability. URBAN-X provides Pre-Seed and Seed-Stage entrepreneurs with individualised and tailored support to accelerate growth and help build successful businesses for city-focused innovators. Core to its platform, URBAN-X offers world-class engineering and design resources, and investment capital from venture partner JVP, a network of investors, policymakers, corporate strategies and end-customers.

“We’re thrilled to be launching the newest cohort of climate tech start-ups as part of our URBAN-X programme,” said Mike Peyton, President of MINI Business Innovations LLC, and Vice President of MINI of the Americas. “MINI was founded on innovating sustainable mobility for city dwellers and today, we’re committed to driving positive change in urban environments. Supporting the next generation of climate tech founders and start-ups is essential in achieving this mission and helping our country reach its climate goals.”

“Cohort 12 includes some of the most inventive and devoted technologists we have seen throughout the years,” said Johan Schwind, Managing Director of URBAN-X. “As calls for climate action grow louder across the globe, we are excited to work alongside these changemakers and support them in bringing their visions to life across our cities.”

Since 2016, URBAN-X has supported more than 80 start-ups spanning 14 countries to address complex challenges facing cities. To date, URBAN-X has helped to enable start-ups to collectively raise over $440M, from seed to Series B, alongside four company exits.