The global climate tech narrative has a blind spot. While Silicon Valley dominates headlines and European climate funds proliferate, Latin America and the Caribbean, or LAC — home to 40% of the world’s biodiversity and over half of its primary forests — receives less than 1% of global climate venture funding. This is a strategic misallocation of capital that overlooks a region already generating breakthrough solutions to our most pressing climate challenges.
Over the past year, with support from Breakthrough Energy Discovery, our team at Reciprocal has articulated the case for the region in the LAC Climate Edge Report, the most comprehensive analysis to date of climate and nature tech innovation across LAC. What we found challenges conventional wisdom about where climate innovation happens and has revealed a region positioned to become the world’s next leading climate tech launchpad as we enter the next phase, an era of “Cleantech 3.0”.
Innovation, despite barriers
Our analysis of more than 770 startups and insights from more than 110 founders, investors, and ecosystem stakeholders reveals a region where necessity is driving remarkable innovation. Take smart lithium extraction in Chile, where companies are developing technologies that could reduce water usage by 95% while increasing yield; critical advances as global battery demand explodes. Or the region’s tremendous geothermal potential that could provide baseload renewable energy at scale, leveraging LAC’s position along the Ring of Fire.
In Brazil’s Cerrado, entrepreneurs are pioneering biological inputs that replace synthetic fertilizers while sequestering carbon, solutions that are transforming agriculture while addressing the region’s deforestation challenges. Meanwhile, Colombian and Chilean startups are building biodiversity monitoring platforms powered by their own satellites, delivering compliance-ready nature intelligence as new EU regulations require 50,000+ companies to disclose nature risks.
All of these solutions are happening against the backdrop of a region where 65% of electricity already comes from renewables, 80% of the population is urbanized, and policy momentum is growing. As COP30 takes place in Brazil this year, LAC is already living the transition.
Local solutions in LAC can’t stay where they are, either. They’re globally relevant technologies emerging from regions where climate impacts are most acute and natural resources most abundant. The proximity to both problems and solutions creates a unique innovation advantage that’s difficult to find elsewhere, and highly applicable to Global South challenges.
Multi-billion dollar markets
Our research identified ten subsectors and 25 investment theses that represent multi-billion-dollar market opportunities by 2030. The standouts include:
Regenerative land systems: From silvopastoral expansion that increases livestock productivity while storing carbon to restoration supply chains that could support the $200+ billion global nature restoration market.
Ocean innovation: Sustainable aquaculture feed technologies addressing a $15+ billion global market, plus maritime decarbonization solutions for one of the world’s hardest-to-abate sectors.
Nature finance infrastructure: Digital trust platforms for carbon markets, biodiversity credits, and parametric insurance — emerging financial instruments that could unlock hundreds of billions in nature-based investments.
Clean manufacturing: Green ammonia and cement production leveraging a grid powered by 65% renewable energy, and biomanufacturing platforms that could rival traditional chemical processes within a closed carbon cycle.
The market timing couldn’t be better. Costa Rica has doubled its forest cover through ecosystem service payments. Five LAC countries are pioneering nature finance models. The EU’s Nature Restoration Law and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive are creating massive demand for the monitoring and verification technologies already emerging from the region. Topping it all off, the United States has largely retreated from the conversation, leaving behind oxygen for local actors to push their solutions and stories.
Catalyzing ecosystems alongside companies
Our work with Breakthrough Energy Discovery represents a strategic approach to ecosystem building. While traditional climate tech investment focuses on individual companies, Breakthrough Energy Discovery recognized that LAC needed foundational market intelligence and ecosystem connectivity. Our research, in turn, showed that countries like Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay, who invested in their ecosystems, saw outsized returns in startup creation and capital flows.
Their support enabled us to conduct the deep research underlying the LAC Edge Report, analyzing market opportunities, mapping innovation clusters, and identifying the specific gaps preventing scale. More importantly, it empowered Reciprocal to create a clear bridge between LAC innovators and global capital, creating pathways for future Breakthrough Energy Fellows and other climate entrepreneurs to access the region’s unique advantages.
This collaboration reflects Breakthrough Energy Discovery’s broader thesis: Innovation is everywhere, but opportunity is not.
The scaling challenge – and opportunity
Despite the innovation, LAC climate startups face a harsh reality: most domestic markets are too small to support venture-scale companies. Success requires global thinking from day one. The founders we studied don’t have the luxury of building for local markets first—they must design for international scalability while navigating complex regulatory environments and limited local capital.
This constraint is becoming a competitive advantage. LAC startups enter global markets battle-tested, lean, and adaptable. They’ve solved for resource constraints, regulatory complexity, and market uncertainty; skills that serve them well internationally.
The region’s shared ecosystems, energy flows, and trade relationships create natural opportunities for regional scale before global expansion. A geothermal technology proven in Chile can scale across the Andes. Biodiversity monitoring platforms developed in Colombia can serve all of Amazonia. Ocean technologies piloted in Peru can address global maritime challenges.
A call to action for global climate capital
Latin America and the Caribbean isn’t asking for charity, but is offering partnership. The region needs risk capital that recognizes frontier markets require different timelines and success metrics. It needs strategic partners who understand that proximity to climate impacts creates innovation advantages, not challenges alone.
For investors, LAC’s climate landscape represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to access high-impact technologies at earlier stages and lower valuations than in saturated markets. For corporates, it offers partnerships with innovators who understand real-world climate challenges intimately. For policymakers, it provides a roadmap for supporting innovation in regions most critical to global climate success.
The LAC Edge Report launches September 22 at NYC Climate Week, and it marks just the beginning of the conversation. We’re inviting global climate leaders to look beyond traditional innovation hubs and engage with a region ready to lead the next wave of climate solutions. Now the only question remaining is whether the global market will recognize this reality in time to participate.
The full LAC Edge Report will be available following the September 22 launch event during NYC Climate Week.
Benjamin Zehr is Co-Founder and CEO of Reciprocal, a venture platform for climate and nature innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean. The LAC Climate Edge Report was made possible thanks to support from Breakthrough Energy Discovery.
