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Former Impossible Foods executive Nick Halla has launched GigaClimate, a venture builder that seeks to develop climate tech moonshots, Halla tells Axios. 

Why it matters: Young hard tech startups face major challenges trying to grow innovations from the lab scale to a commercial product. 

Zoom in: Halla, who was the first employee at Impossible Foods in 2011 and stayed until 2022, has been operating GigaClimate in stealth over the past year. 

The first startup to go through the GigaClimate program is Carba, a carbon removal company that turns biomass into biochar and then buries it. 

Halla spent the last year as a de facto executive at Carba. He helped the startup develop its first pilot project in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, close a $7 million grant from the Department of Energy's Carbon Negative Shot program, and raise a $1.5 million in seed funding.  

"We're embedding ourselves in to build hard tech, and hard tech is hard. Each company has its own path to success," says Halla. 

How it works: GigaClimate takes an equity stake in exchange for their work. 

The group looks for startups in the pre-seed stage that are poised to turn a lab innovation into a commercial product. 

GigaClimate then embeds in the startup and starts building it out. 

"[In the early days] we are a large part of the team. And then within 18 months, we've replaced ourselves," says Halla. 

The big picture: Climate hard tech has been difficult for startups to scale and VCs to fund.

What's next: GigaClimate is particularly interested in startups around methane and nitrous oxide, carbon removal, adaptation and resilience. 

Halla says GigaClimate is looking at opportunities in keeping people cool during heat waves, shoreline resilience for rising sea levels, and methane capture and breakdown.

Exclusive: Former Impossible Foods exec launches GigaClimate

The group will seek to grow climate hard tech startups

In a pilot project biochar is buried at a landfill in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota

Carba's pilot project buried biochar at a landfill in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. Photo: Courtesy of Carba

Former Impossible Foods executive Nick Halla has launched GigaClimate, a venture builder that seeks to develop climate tech moonshots, Halla tells Axios. Why it matters: Young hard tech startups face major challenges trying to grow innovations from the lab scale to a commercial product.

Exclusive: Former Impossible Foods exec launches GigaClimate

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