April 11, 2024

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Methane-to-value solutions startup Windfall Bio has raised $28 million in Series A funding led by Prelude Ventures with participation from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Global Brain (through its Norinchukin Innovation Fund L.P.), Incite Ventures, Positive Ventures, and existing investor B37 Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mayfield, and UNTITLED – a fund backed by the Tetra Laval family.

Windfall Bio emerged from stealth in March 2023 with $9 million in Seed funding, and with this Series A, brings total funding to-date to $37 million – an accomplishment that it stated further validates the wide ranging need for its methane mitigation solution. 

An assessment released in 2021 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition determined that reducing farming-generated methane levels is of high priority for fighting climate change.

Livestock emissions from both gastrointestinal release and manure account for about 30 percent of all methane emissions caused by human activity, such as farming, and represents a prime opportunity to rapidly and significantly reduce global emissions, especially as market and regulatory demands increase. But why is methane so harmful? 

The aforementioned report explains that methane is the primary cause of the formation of ground-level ozone – a dangerous pollutant and greenhouse gas responsible for 1 million premature deaths each year, as concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled since pre-industrial times. Furthermore, as a greenhouse gas, methane is 86 times more potent at causing global warming compared to CO2, over a 20-year period. 

These factors, and others, have led to ruminal methanogenesis being identified as a key battleground for meeting projected climate goals by the UN Global Methane Pledge. 

Windfall’s nature-based solution harnesses methane-eating microbes called mems that capture methane from any source while also capturing nitrogen from the air to produce organic fertilizer for customers on-site. 

“Windfall Bio is a cost effective and simple methane mitigation solution that increases the efficiency, profitability, and sustainability of methane emitting industries. Uniquely, Windfall’s approach can rapidly scale globally across large industries to meaningfully reduce methane emissions,” said Mark Cupta, managing director, Prelude Ventures.

The company explained that for agricultural customers, mems create value through the improvement of soil, enabling emissions tracking and reporting, improving resource efficiency, and the generation of new revenue streams from the sale of organic fertilizer. 

“While addressing methane emissions is the most impactful strategy available today to tackle near-term climate change, it has remained a critically underappreciated and underfunded problem for global warming, only recently gaining significant attention in climate discussions,” said Josh Silverman, co-founder and CEO, Windfall Bio. 

“However, methane represents an important resource that can create significant value for customers if they are given the right tools. We’ve seen early commercial traction and with the support of our strategic investors, Windfall will empower customers across industries to eliminate harmful methane emissions and create valuable outputs in return.”

This Series A builds upon successive milestones achieved by the company over the course of the past year including building out its executive team and Board of Advisors, advancing its go-to-market strategy, and being named one of Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech. 

With the capital from this round, the company plans to increase support for its commercial pipeline, expand pilot deployments across methane-intensive industries, including agriculture, waste management, and oil and gas. It also plans to invest in the build-out of its team, manufacturing capacity, and supply chain to meet global demand for methane mitigation solutions. 

Windfall Bio’s approach to methane mitigation creates an exciting greenhouse gas emissions reduction opportunity for agricultural customers and other industries,” said Nick Ellis, with Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund. “We look forward to piloting Windfall Bio with our Whole Foods Market suppliers, and delivering results together in the coming years.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and Agtech Intel News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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