Israeli climate tech raised over $2B in 2021, but the investor base backing it is thinner and more generalist than cybersecurity or fintech — MizMaa, Terra Venture Partners, OurCrowd, and a $870M government backstop.
Israeli climate tech pulled in more than $2 billion in venture capital in 2021 and held up better than the broader tech market through the 2022-2023 downturn, but the fund landscape backing it looks different from Israel's cybersecurity or fintech investor base: fewer dedicated climate specialists, more generalist funds treating climate as one vertical among several, and a government layer trying to backfill the gap. Here is who is actually writing the checks.
How Much Capital Has Actually Gone Into Israeli Climate Tech?
Israeli climate-tech startups raised over $2 billion in venture capital in 2021 and roughly $1 billion in the first half of 2022 alone, according to IVC data cited by MizMaa Ventures, representing about 8% of all Israeli VC investment that year, versus a 14% climate-tech share of VC funding globally, per the same source. That gap, Israel under-indexing on climate relative to the rest of the world's venture markets, is the structural fact any Israeli climate-tech fund has to work against.
The 784 climate-tech startups mapped by the Israel Innovation Authority and PLANETech in 2023 raised a combined $2.27 billion in 2022, down only 12% year over year despite a broader Israeli tech-funding collapse of roughly 42% over the same period, a resilience the sector's own investors point to as evidence climate tech is becoming a distinct, defensible category rather than a subset of general cleantech.
Who Are the Dedicated Climate and Deep-Tech Investors?
MizMaa Ventures is an early-stage, thesis-driven Tel Aviv fund that has positioned itself explicitly around Israeli climate-related deep tech, co-publishing a climate-tech map with IVC covering more than 200 private Israeli companies across cleantech, agrifood, and industrial-decarbonization categories. Terra Venture Partners, based in Jerusalem, runs a broader early-stage mandate spanning cleantech, agritech and foodtech, medical, mobility, and construction/proptech, rather than a climate-exclusive thesis, reflecting how much Israeli climate-adjacent investing sits inside multi-sector early-stage funds rather than single-purpose climate vehicles.
OurCrowd, the Jerusalem-based crowd-investing platform with more than 225,000 registered investors across 195 countries, has run a dedicated foodtech-and-climate-adjacent fund with a targeted raise of $30 million, giving retail-adjacent investors direct exposure to Israeli climate and foodtech deals at a minimum ticket size far below traditional VC. Gemini Israel Ventures, one of Israel's oldest funds with roughly $700 million under management since 1993, lists environmental technologies among its target sectors alongside communications and enterprise software, another example of climate exposure arriving through a generalist rather than a specialist fund.
What Role Does the Israeli Government Play in Climate-Tech Funding?
The Israeli government has committed approximately $870 million to promote climate-tech innovation, a figure that follows former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's 2021 framing of Israel as a "Climate Innovation Nation" and the country's first Climate Law, passed in May 2022, which set a national target of net-zero emissions by 2050 alongside a phased transition to renewable energy sources. That government commitment functions less as direct equity investment and more as grant funding, R&D matching, and innovation-authority support layered underneath the private VC stack described above.
PLANETech, Israel's climate-tech nonprofit, has become the sector's central convening body, hosting its first annual conference in 2022 with roughly 1,500 attendees and co-publishing the annual State of Climate Tech report with the Israel Innovation Authority that most funds and founders now cite as the sector's baseline dataset.
How Does This Fund Landscape Compare to Israel's Other Tech Verticals?
Israeli climate tech does not yet have a fund with the singular category dominance that, say, Team8 or specialist cyber funds hold in cybersecurity. Instead, capital flows through a mix of true climate specialists (MizMaa), broad early-stage generalists with a climate-adjacent thesis (Terra Venture Partners), crowd-investing platforms carving out a climate-and-food vertical (OurCrowd), and legacy multi-sector funds that have simply added environmental technology to an existing mandate (Gemini). Layered underneath all of it sits direct government grant funding that does not show up in VC deal databases but materially affects which companies survive to their next VC round.
That structure helps explain a pattern visible across Olam's exit ledger for the sector: the companies that have actually exited, Prospera to Valmont, Desalitech to DuPont, were funded by a mix of strategic corporate partners and generalist funds rather than climate-dedicated venture vehicles, because Israel's climate-specialist fund layer is still thin relative to the capital the sector needs.
FAQ
How much did Israeli climate tech raise in 2021?
More than $2 billion in venture capital, according to IVC data, representing roughly 8% of all Israeli VC investment that year.
What is MizMaa Ventures?
MizMaa Ventures is an early-stage, thesis-driven Tel Aviv venture fund focused on Israeli deep-tech entrepreneurs, with a particular emphasis on climate-related technology, and co-publisher of an industry climate-tech map with IVC covering over 200 companies.
Has the Israeli government invested directly in climate tech?
The government has committed approximately $870 million to climate-tech innovation, largely through grants and R&D support via the Israel Innovation Authority rather than direct equity investment, following the country's first Climate Law in May 2022.
What is PLANETech?
PLANETech is Israel's climate-tech nonprofit and industry convening body, which hosted its first annual conference in 2022 and co-publishes the annual State of Climate Tech report with the Israel Innovation Authority.
Related on The Olam
- Who Owns Israel's Carbon-Tech Sector?
- The Israeli Climate-Tech Exit Ledger
- Israel's Grid-Tech and Battery-Storage Startups
- The Israeli Renewables Developer Wave
Sources
MizMaa Ventures, "The Case for ClimateTech in Israel," citing IVC data. Times of Israel, "Climate tech investments down 60% during first half of 2023," citing the Israel Innovation Authority / PLANETech State of Climate Tech 2023 report. Jerusalem Post, "Food-tech and ag-tech are Israel's largest climate tech sectors." Terra Venture Partners and OurCrowd, public fund profiles. Gemini Israel Ventures, public fund profile.
