A software startup raises equity and spends it. A climate startup building, say, a new electrolyser or a mineralisation process often runs a federal grant, a seed round and early talks with a lender all in the same year, each with its own deadlines, reporting and diligence. Miss a grant report and you can lose the award. Miss the lender's data request and the plant slips a season.
The science is the hard part, but founders tell the same story about the admin: the money arrives on three timetables and nobody owns the whole calendar. That's the gap this page is about.
Tools for climate tech startups, matched to each kind of capital
Start by naming the three kinds of money, because each one asks for different work from you.
| Capital | Example from the source | What it asks of you | Where it goes in Nautis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-dilutive grants | US SBIR and STTR, which SBIR.gov calls equity-free funding | Applications on agency deadlines, then technical and financial reports | Fundraising CRM for applications, Non-Operating Income in the Financial Planner |
| Demonstration funding | The EU Innovation Fund, about €40 billion for 2020 to 2030 | Large consortium bids, emission reduction cases | Task boards for the bid, a data room for partners |
| Venture equity | Seed and Series A rounds | Pitch, model, diligence | Fundraising CRM, Investor Readiness, data rooms |
| Project finance and loans | The US DOE lending office, now the Office of Energy Dominance Financing | Lender-style diligence of six months to more than a year | Loan Schedule in the Financial Planner, a lender data room |
Nautis doesn't search for grants or write bids for you. What it does is keep all of these in one place with owners and dates, next to the runway number that tells you which one matters most this month.
The hardest money to find is for the first plant
CTVC's 2025 climate tech investor pulse check, a survey of about 100 respondents, found that 51% saw first commercial-stage facilities as the toughest stage to finance in 2025 and 2026. 69% expected capital for those first-of-a-kind facilities to shrink through 2026. Policy uncertainty was the top concern for over half of respondents.
Two other answers say a lot about how founders are coping. 24% pointed to a shift toward non-dilutive capital or bridge rounds to extend runway, and 37% reported founders accepting more dilution to close deals.
The practical lesson: start planning the capital for your first plant while you're still at pilot scale, and expect it to be a mix. Project finance, catalytic capital and incentives were all named by respondents as ways to bridge that gap. Your financial model needs to show where each piece comes from and when.
How do you run grants alongside a venture round?
Treat each grant application like an investor conversation, with a stage, an amount and a next step. In Find Investors, the Investment Mechanisms filter includes grants and debt alongside equity and SAFEs, and the Industries and Technologies filters narrow the list to funders in your field.
The Fundraising CRM is built for equity rounds, but its stages are editable under Manage Stages. Some teams keep a separate round called Non-dilutive with stages such as Eligible, Drafting, Submitted, Awarded and Declined, with Awarded marked as Won so it counts toward the total. Each agency or programme becomes a deal, with the award amount as the check size. That way the progress bar shows how much non-dilutive money you've actually secured, apart from equity.
In the Financial Planner, grants have a natural home: the Model Inputs tab lists Non-Operating Income, with interest and grants as its examples. Put each expected award there with the month you'll realistically receive it, not the month you applied. Use the Notes tab to say which awards are confirmed and which are hoped for. Investors will read that page carefully.
SBIR.gov lists award ceilings that agencies can issue without SBA approval: up to $335,937 for Phase I and $2,239,578 for Phase II, as of October 16, 2026. Check the specific agency's solicitation for its own limits before you put a number in the model.
Long R&D means runway is the number to watch
Many climate companies spend years before meaningful revenue. In Startup Health, MRR may sit at zero for a long time, which is fine. Cash and burn still give you runway, and the alert at under 6 months is the one to respect. If a grant pays you back after you spend, some months will look worse than they are, so add a line about it in the investor snapshot's Burn section.
Investor Readiness accepts that pre-revenue is fine at pre-seed, and its Raise window compares your runway with how long a raise at your stage typically takes. For a hardware-heavy climate company, read that as a floor. Lender and grant timelines often run longer than the equity raise.
Big technical bets deserve a record. When you choose to scale a reactor tenfold or switch feedstock, log it in the Decision Loop under Tech or Strategy, link it to the relevant milestone, and set a 90-day review. Write the expected outcome as a number you'll measure, such as a yield or a cost per tonne. Two years later, when an investor asks why you made that call, the reasoning is still there and can't be rewritten.
A quarter inside a carbon removal startup
Take a nine-person team running a pilot plant, with a Phase I grant in hand, a seed round half closed and a first conversation with a lender about a demonstration facility.
- Month 1. The CEO creates a task board for the Phase II application, with each section, letter of support and budget table as a task. The CFO updates the Financial Planner with the seed close and adds the Phase II award as a hoped-for line, flagged in Notes.
- Month 1. A second Financial Planner project, cloned from the first, assumes Phase II is declined. Compare shows the runway gap is about five months, which sets the size of the bridge to ask for.
- Month 2. The lender sends a document list. The team builds a data room with folders for Technical, Permitting, Offtake and Financials, tags each file, and shares it by passcode link.
- Month 2. On Raise HQ, Who's reading shows two seed investors haven't opened the updated model. The CEO approves the follow-ups Beacon drafted under Follow up today.
- Month 3. The Phase II application is submitted and moves to Submitted in the Non-dilutive round. The decision to site the demonstration plant near a partner's facility goes into the Decision Loop as irreversible.
Data rooms built for lender and grant diligence
Lenders work differently from venture investors. The DOE's lending office, which now operates as the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, describes its due diligence as similar to commercial lenders and says it typically takes a minimum of six months to more than a year. It also offers a no-cost pre-application consultation. Its programme page now stresses energy security, grid reliability, nuclear and critical minerals, so check that your project fits before you plan around it.
Months of diligence means many versions of the same documents. A data room keeps a version history for every file, so the lender sees the current engineering report and you can still show what changed. Give each counterparty its own private link with an expiry, and check the Analytics tab before each call to see what they've actually read.
Name folders and files plainly. Investor Readiness matches its diligence checklist by file or folder name, so "Financial model" is found and "FM_v7_final2" may not be.
When Nautis isn't enough for climate tech
- Lifecycle and carbon accounting. Measuring the emissions your product avoids or removes needs dedicated methods, software and often third-party verification. Nautis doesn't calculate it.
- Project finance models. The Financial Planner gives you a P&L, balance sheet, cash flow and loan schedules. A lender-grade model for a plant, with its own debt structure and sensitivities, is usually built in a spreadsheet with your adviser.
- Grant cost accounting. Government awards often come with rules on how costs are tracked and reported. Set that up in your accounting system with an accountant who knows the programme. Nautis isn't an accounting system.
- Lab and engineering records. Experimental data, lab notebooks and engineering documents belong in tools made for them.
- Permitting and site work. Specialist consultants and their systems handle this.
- A long vendor history. Nautis launched publicly in July 2026, so there are few independent reviews yet.
If you're building physical equipment as well, the hardware startups page covers inventory and manufacturing cash cycles.
FAQ
What tools do climate tech startups need first?
Start with a runway tracker, a multi-year financial model that separates grants, equity and debt, and one pipeline for every funder you're talking to. Add a controlled data room once lenders or grant bodies ask for documents. Carbon accounting and lab systems come from specialist vendors.
Is SBIR funding dilutive?
No. SBIR.gov describes the SBIR and STTR programmes as equity-free, non-dilutive funding from federal agencies for small businesses developing technology. Award ceilings differ by phase and agency, so check the solicitation you're applying to.
How do I show grants in a startup financial model?
In the Nautis Financial Planner, add expected grants under Non-Operating Income on the Model Inputs tab, in the month the cash will actually arrive. Use the Notes tab to say which awards are confirmed. Build a second scenario where the largest grant is declined, and compare the two.
Why is the first commercial plant so hard to finance?
It's too big and too risky for most early venture funds, and too new for many lenders. In CTVC's 2025 investor survey, 51% of respondents named first commercial-stage facilities as the toughest stage to finance, and 69% expected that capital to shrink through 2026.