Energy and climate deals of the week

Venture capital

• Quaise Energy, a developer of geothermal energy drilling tech, raised $144m in Series B funding led by Prelude Ventures. Go deeper

• Oxylabs, a Lithuanian data infrastructure platform, raised $130m from Warburg Pincus at a $3.6b valuation. Go deeper

• Venus Aerospace, a Houston-based propulsion startup developing rocket engines for hypersonic flight, raised a $91m Series B. Mercury Fund led, joined by Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital, and Green Sands Equity. Go deeper

• Arkenstone Defense, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based defense tech provider for the back office, raised a $35m seed round led by J2 Ventures. Susa Ventures, Granite Hill Capital Partners, and Artis Ventures joined. Go deeper

• Hippo Harvest, a Pescadero, Calif.-based organic greens grower, raised a $30m Series C round led by Cox Farms and joined by Congruent Ventures, Hawthorne Food Ventures, Collaborative Fund and the Fresh Investment Club. Go deeper

• Axle Energy, a British virtual power plant operator, raised €21m in Series A funding. Energize Capital led, joined by insiders Accel, Picus Capital and Eka Ventures. Go deeper

• Bohr Energie, a French distributed energy management provider, raised €10m in Series A funding. Suma Capital led, joined by Irdi Capital Investissement, GSO Capital, Crédit Agricole, and insiders Varsity, Founders Future and AFI Ventures. Go deeper

• Fuchs & Eule, a German startup guiding commercial landlords through energy retrofits, has raised €10m. GET Fund led, joined by PI Impact, Wave-X, and insiders SET Ventures, Picus Capital and Realyze Ventures. Go deeper

• Emesent, an Australian autonomous mapping and robotics company, raised US$10m from Main Sequence, QIC Ventures, Orion Resource Partners, Hostplus, and NGS Super. It also secured $7m in venture debt. Go deeper

• Aardaia, a Dutch startup domesticating protein-rich tubers, raised €5m in seed funding. Point Nine led, joined by Astanor, Grey Silo Ventures, and insider FoodLabs. Go deeper

• One Raven, a Phoenix-based smart home systems startup, raised a $5m seed led by Fifth Wall. Go deeper

• TaiSan, a U.K. battery materials startup, raised £4.65m in seed funding led by Eos Advisory and Mercia Ventures.Go deeper

• Aylight, a Zürich-based photonics company, raised a €4.5m pre-seed. Elaia and Swisscom Ventures led, joined by Verve Ventures and Plug and Play. Go deeper

• Forge Industries, a Las Vegas-based waste-to-fuel tech developer, raised $3.9m. Next Phase Capital and 8090 Industries led, joined by Golden Seeds. Go deeper

Private Equity

• Blackstone agreed to acquire Dresser Utility Solutions, a provider of utility metering equipment, from First Reserve. Go deeper

• EQT agreed to buy Orikan, an Australian smart parking tech company, for around A$475m from Five V Capital. Go deeper

• EQT agreed to buy Copia Power, a Dana Point, Calif.-based data center power and infrastructure firm, from Carlyle for $2.6b. Go deeper

• GFL Environmental (NYSE: GFL) is weighing a take-private deal, after receiving inbound PE interest, per Bloomberg. Go deeper

• I Squared Capital agreed to acquire Milestone Environmental, a Houston-based provider of waste management solutions for the energy and industrial sectors, from SK Capital Partners. Go deeper

• Juniper Landscaping, a Bregal Partners portfolio company, acquired Compass Environmental and Aquatic Weeds, two Central Florida-based providers of aquatic maintenance and shoreline restoration services. Go deeper

• Paine Schwartz Partners completed its minority investing in Amfresh, a fresh produce company, and its Bloom Fresh multi-fruit breeding and IP licensing subsidiary. Go deeper

• The Private Department of Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalid Al Nahyan invested $1.1b in MidOcean Energy, an LNG company backed by EIG. Go deeper

M&A

• Italian energy company Eni is buying a 25% stake in a Chilean lithium project owned by startup EnergyX for $225 million. Go deeper

• Genesis Minerals (ASX: GMD) launched an A$5.6b cash-and-stock bid for Australian gold miner Vault Minerals (ASX: VAU), which already had agreed to be acquired by Regis Resources (ASX: RRL). Go deeper

• Solstice Advanced Materials (Nasdaq: SOLS), a recent Honeywell spinout, agreed to acquire fellow chemicals firm Element Solutions (NYSE: ESI) for around $14.5b in cash and stock. Go deeper

• TotalEnergies (Paris: TTE) sold its European distributed solar projects to Amarenco Solar and Ampyr Distributed Energy. Go deeper

• Trimble (Nasdaq: TRMB) hired Goldman Sachs to sell its transportation and logistics unit, which booked $549m in 2025 revenue. Go deeper

Liquidity

• Ecolab (NYSE: ECL) completed its $4.75b acquisition of Canadian data-center cooling company CoolIT Systems from KKR. Go deeper

Public markets

• Freedom Metals Acquisition, a critical minerals and mining SPAC, raised $275m in its IPO. Go deeper

• Rivian, an Irvine, Calif.-based EV maker, plans to raise $1.5B by selling 75M shares of its stock. Go deeper

• Syntiant, an Irvine, Calif.-based developer of ultra-low power chips, filed for an IPO that Renaissance Capital estimates could raise $300m. It reports a $61m net loss on $272m in revenue for 2025, and plans to list on the Nasdaq (SYTN). Syntiant raised over $300m from firms like M12, Intel Capital, Applied Ventures, Atlantic Bridge Capital, Alpha Edison, and Miramar Digital Ventures. Go deeper

Debt

• Nscale, a British neocloud company, secured a $900M line of credit from a syndicate of banks including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, MUFG, RBC Capital Markets, Bank of America, Credit Agricole CIB, Deutsche Bank, Mizuho, SMBC, TD Securities and KeyBank. Go deeper

Fundraising

• B Capital closed B Capital Ascent Fund III at a hard cap of $500m. Go deeper

• Chemistry Ventures is raising $500m for its second fund. Go deeper

• Climentum Capital of Denmark held a €60m first close for its second climate hardware fund. Go deeper

• CVC Capital Partners raised around €3b for its third midmarket buyout fund. Go deeper

• Drumbeat Capital, a deeptech seed firm led by Steven Jacobs, is raising up to $50m for a new fund, per an SEC filing. Go deeper

• Expeditions, a Polish and UK-based VC firm focused on European defense-tech, raised €197m for its second fund. Go deeper

• Isogen Ventures, founded by Dan Abelson (ex-Two Sigma Ventures) and Paco Riberas (Orilla), is raising up to $150m for its debut fund, per an SEC filing. Go deeper

• Seifdune, a VC firm led by Armaan Syed Ali, is raising up to $150m for its debut fund, per an SEC filing. Go deeper

Personnel

• Greycroft promoted Carley Phillips to partner, making her the youngest partner in firm history. Go deeper