Urban tech passes 100 unicorn milestone, but funding momentum has eased

As the UN’s climate conference COP27 takes place in Sharm El Sheikh, a new report by Dealroom and 2150 explores the state of Urban Tech innovation and entrepreneurship.

Climate risk is accelerating and cities will play a key role in ensuring we can hit sustainability targets. Urban technologies can support us rethinking and renovating our ways of building and living in cities. 

Funding for urban tech startups stutters 

Urban tech startups have collectively raised $28B in 2022 to date. While this is already more than was raised in the full year of 2020 (or any year prior), it is projected to fall short of last year’s total by 23%. This is against a backdrop of a broad pullback in venture capital investment in every sector amid a global economic downturn, but this loss of momentum is nonetheless a blow to net-zero targets.

Despite a considerable drop in corporate participation, heavy industry giants, such as Cemex and Honeywell, continue to be active urban tech investors.

Urban tech passes 100 unicorn milestone

Globally, the Urban Tech ecosystem has now produced over 100 unicorns – startups valued at over $1 billion – with the vast majority emerging within Clean energy and grid technology, and Urban mobility and logistics.

Scaled success in other categories has been ramping up in the last two years, however. 2022 saw 2 urban tech unicorns emerge within ESG & carbon tracking, as well as the first new unicorn in building efficiency since 2015. Buildings take up 37% of global CO2 emissions, and so this is an important shift.

Many high impact niches remain underfunded 

Urban flooding caused an estimated $440B in damage in the decade to 2020. Less than 0.2% of that amount has been invested in flood prevention, monitoring and response startups in all time. While investment has been ramping up in the last two years (over $200M was raised in 2021, and a similar total projected for 2022), these numbers are still tiny compared to the size of the challenges they’re addressing, and indeed the size of the potential market opportunity.