Ponderosa Ventures
7-10 Chandos Street, 6th Floor, North Suite, London, W1G 9DQ, United Kingdom
Overview
We believe that a radical change to our food, agriculture, and ocean sectors is necessary to meet our climate, biodiversity, water, and human health goals. We invest $100-750k in pre-seed and seed-stage companies working to transform these sectors. Our average time to reach a yes / no decision is 15 days (but check back because we update this number live). We keep our investment process targeted so you can go back to building your company.
- Total investments
- 27
- Lead investments
- 1
- Investments · 12mo
- 4
- Active investors
- 1
Sector focus
- Venture Capital
Investment portfolio
- CREW Carbon
Participated · Series A · May 2026
CREW Carbon offers a process intensification solution for wastewater treatment that uses strategically-sourced alkaline minerals to optimize pH and alkalinity, improving biological performance, settleability, and plant capacity while permanently sequestering CO2. Since beginning commercial operations in 2024, CREW has deployed at nearly 10 facilities across the U.S. and Europe and secured long-term RFPs with utilities. The company has captured over 2,000 tons of CO2 and secured more than $33 million in carbon removal offtake agreements, delivering verified carbon removal credits to corporate buyers. CREW has developed proprietary measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) capabilities and is developing a scalable analytics platform to provide operational insights and process optimization. Financial and strategic support from the Series A will be used to scale deployments, expand customer engagements, and add key hires in wastewater process, technology, supply chain, and business development.
- Terranova
Participated · Seed · Nov 2025
Terranova is tackling urban flooding by physically raising land rather than building seawalls. Its core system combines a wood-waste slurry, proprietary geospatial software, and tracked robotic injectors that autonomously drill wells 40–60 feet deep and pump the material to elevate the ground. The company’s software ingests public geological data and core samples to generate subsurface models and determine optimal injection patterns using a genetic algorithm, while a SimCity-like interface lets city planners design projects that robots later execute. Terranova has operated a pilot site for more than a year and claims it can lift 240 acres in San Rafael four feet for $92 million—far less than estimated seawall costs of $500-900 million. Revenue will be shared with contractors on each project, and the firm also expects to monetize carbon credits from the sequestered wood. Future applications include restoring subsidized wetlands alongside additional city projects worldwide. The oversubscribed seed round places Terranova’s post-money valuation at $25.1 million, giving it fresh capital to advance product development and commercial deployments.
- Coolant
Participated · Seed · Oct 2025
Coolant, a spin-out from MIT’s Climate and Energy Ventures, builds a Spatial AI platform that turns inexpensive commercial drone imagery into high-resolution 3D reconstructions of forests, farmland, coastlines and other economically critical landscapes. Its proprietary spatio-temporal model delivers actionable insights such as inventory, risk analysis, forecasting and optimized land-management strategies to farmers, conservation groups, forest managers and public agencies. The company’s technology is already deployed in 14 countries and is supporting projects like a 1,500-acre mangrove restoration in Puerto Rico with The Ocean Foundation’s Blue Resilience Initiative. By continually collecting drone scans, Coolant aims to assemble the world’s largest spatial dataset and eventually map every centimeter of the Earth’s surface. This ambitious data capture plan is intended to unlock richer, real-time ecosystem intelligence and broaden the platform’s commercial use cases across transportation, robotics and manufacturing. Financially, Coolant has secured $4.3 million in total Pre-Seed and Seed funding to accelerate product development and global expansion. No revenue or user figures were disclosed in the article, but the capital provides runway for scaling data collection and advancing its 3D reconstruction models.
- Mondra
Participated · Series A · Oct 2025
Mondra provides an AI-powered supply chain intelligence platform that maps complex, farm-to-fork networks for the food industry using digital twin technology. The software delivers real-time data on carbon footprints, broader environmental impacts, price volatility and climate-related supply risks, integrating these insights into the existing systems of retailers, food producers and suppliers. Customers can generate audit-ready ESG data, analyse sourcing alternatives and collaborate with suppliers to prioritise emissions reductions while protecting profitability. Last year the company introduced Sherpa, an embedded AI assistant that acts as a co-pilot for decision-making across climate, social and financial dimensions. Mondra plans to extend its analytics beyond emissions tracking to cover supply-chain disruption and broader climate-risk management. Backed by new funding, the team will accelerate expansion into key European markets such as the Netherlands, Germany and France. Although specific revenue or user figures have not been disclosed, the firm positions itself as a critical enabler of Net Zero strategies within the global food sector.
- Soil Action
Participated · Seed · Aug 2025
Soil Action provides a platform that combines near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) with proprietary machine learning models to detect the form and availability of soil nutrients in real time. Its system reads soil as a tractor moves, processes the data on the fly, and builds layered maps of nutrient dynamics without a lab. The company plans to expand field trials with farmers across key U.S. row crop regions and pursue grower collaboration to validate agronomic impact. It intends to accelerate model development and validation while scaling field deployment and engineering teams. Soil Action also plans partnerships with OEMs, input providers, and agronomic platforms to integrate its sensing and modeling capabilities. The company is led by CEO Nate Storey and recently completed a seed financing to support these initiatives.
Team
Evi Steyer
Co-Founder
LinkedIn