Unreasonable Impact announces new roster of ventures for the 2025 Americas programme

• Unreasonable Impact adds 19 ventures tackling critical global challenges to its 2025 Americas programme.
• The initiative, run by Barclays and Unreasonable Group since 2016, helps scale growth-stage businesses through mentoring and a network of support.
• The 19 companies joining this year’s programme have collectively raised over $800 million in financing.

Unreasonable Impact, a partnership between Unreasonable Group and Barclays, which supports high-growth ventures to scale and address global issues, has introduced the newest cohort of ventures selected for its Americas programme.

This year’s ventures offer solutions spanning carbon capture, new materials designed to improve performance and reduce environmental impact, energy infrastructure, and resilient food and logistics systems. These are some examples:

● Summit Nanotech: Summit Nanotech extracts lithium for EV batteries directly from brines using a modular, low-water direct lithium extraction system that delivers consistent, battery-grade output. Founder and CEO Amanda Hall completed a third-party-validated field demonstration with a major mining partner in Chile and is preparing for first commercial deployments.

● GoodSAM Foods: GoodSAM Foods makes snacks, including nuts, coffee, and chocolate, using ingredients sourced directly from smallholder and Indigenous farmers across eight countries. The company provides traceability to product origin and supplier partners and works directly with farmers on regenerative practices. Founder and CEO Heather Terry is expanding national retail distribution, including a growing footprint at Whole Foods.

● CleanJoule: CleanJoule produces a high-performance sustainable aviation fuel made from abundant biomass residues, designed to fully replace conventional jet fuel without any engine or infrastructure modifications. Its proprietary process yields a domestically produced fuel that meets or exceeds the performance standards required for commercial aviation, defense, and space applications. Founder and CEO Mukund Karanjikar is advancing toward commercial-scale production, backed by 90 million gallons in airline offtake agreements.

Collectively, this year’s Americas cohort has raised over $800 million to date and employs more than 900 people.

Through regional gatherings and ongoing community-building initiatives, the Unreasonable Impact programme is designed to help participating entrepreneurs form strategic relationships and quickly solve key challenges facing their businesses to help them scale.

Post-programme, companies will continue to receive access to specialist advice from over 1,100 mentors, many of whom are Barclays colleagues, through the Unreasonable community. Since its launch in 2016, the programme has supported over 370 ventures, who have collectively raised over $16 billion in financing, and employ more than 33,000 people.

Daniel Epstein, CEO of Unreasonable Group, commented:

“Year after year, the partnership we built with Barclays reminds me why we started this in the first place: to back remarkable founders and stay with them as they do the hard work. This cohort is practical, values-driven, and ready to scale. We will be shoulder to shoulder with them with tailored support and the right resources, inside a community that holds us to real outcomes.”

Deborah Goldfarb, Global Head of Citizenship at Barclays, commented:

“It’s so exciting to welcome this group of entrepreneurs to Unreasonable Impact, where they will join the more-than-three-hundred ventures that already make up this extraordinary global community. Each individual in this new cohort is an inspiring innovator, but the magic of Unreasonable Impact is in the partnerships that are forged to overcome barriers, unlock potential, and turbocharge growth.”

MK Karanjikar, Founder and CEO of CleanJoule, commented:

“We are honored that CleanJoule has been selected for the Unreasonable Impact Americas programme. This recognition not only validates our team’s decade-long effort to bring scalable superior fuels to market, but also gives us access to an extraordinary network of mentors, investors, and peers. We look forward to leveraging this opportunity to accelerate our impact to ensure ongoing scalability of the aerospace and defense industries.”

The 19 companies joining the 2025 Unreasonable Impact Americas programme include:

● Blue Frontier  – Developing a new type of commercial air conditioner that uses a salt-based liquid to remove humidity, reducing electricity use by as much as 50–90% in pilot systems compared with conventional systems and storing cooling energy for later use.

● Cambium – Creating a digital marketplace that connects sawmills and large buyers directly, turning salvaged city trees into usable wood and helping reduce waste in the lumber market.

● Carbice – Making recyclable carbon-based thermal materials that stop electronics from overheating. Their dry, reusable sheet can replace traditional thermal pastes and help reduce cooling energy use in data centers.

● CarbonCapture – Building modular direct-air-capture machines that remove CO₂ directly from the atmosphere. Each unit fits into a shipping-container-sized module and can be scaled to meet industrial demand.

● Carbon Upcycling – Converting CO₂ emissions from factories into stronger, lower-carbon cement additives that store carbon permanently while reducing emissions in concrete production.

● CleanJoule – Producing a high-performance sustainable aviation fuel made from renewable biomass, engineered to fully replace conventional jet fuel without requiring changes to aircraft or fueling infrastructure.

● Eden – Developing a clean alternative to hydraulic fracturing by using high-voltage electrical pulses to fracture rock formations, enabling more efficient extraction of geothermal heat and critical minerals without high-pressure water or chemical fracking fluids.

● Fillogic – Turning underused retail spaces into local logistics hubs that make deliveries and returns faster while reducing transportation costs and emissions.

● GoodSAM Foods – Partnering directly with smallholder and Indigenous farmers to sell snacks like nuts, coffee, and chocolate sourced through regenerative agriculture. Farmers earn more, and consumers get transparency from farm to shelf.

● Green Graphite Technologies – Developing a modular, low-emission process for producing battery-grade graphite locally, cutting water use and emissions compared with conventional methods.

● Kanin Energy – Capturing waste heat from industrial facilities and converting it into 24/7 carbon-free electricity through turnkey projects that require no upfront cost from factory partners.

● Kelvin – Retrofitting old radiator systems with smart, insulated covers that give residents room-by-room temperature control and can significantly reduce building heating costs.

● Liberation Bioindustries – Building modern precision-fermentation facilities that let biotech startups scale production of alternative proteins, enzymes, and other bio-based materials efficiently and affordably.

● Moment Energy  – Giving retired electric vehicle batteries a second life by turning them into stationary energy storage systems for commercial and grid applications.

● Planetary Technologies – Restoring ocean chemistry by adding safe, mineral-based “antacids” that help seawater absorb and store atmospheric CO₂ over the long term.

● Ridwell – Operating a doorstep subscription service that collects items traditional recycling programmes can’t handle—like batteries, plastic bags, and textiles—and partners with vetted recyclers to ensure proper reuse.

● Splight – Using AI-driven controls to help power grids safely operate closer to full capacity, improving transmission efficiency without the need for new infrastructure.

● Summit Nanotech – Extracting lithium for EV batteries directly from brines using a proprietary, low-water sorbent system that delivers consistent, battery-grade output.

● Upsolv – Using a patented solvent process to dissolve and recycle hard-to-recycle plastics like polystyrene and ABS into virgin-grade materials, reducing emissions compared with conventional production.

ENDS

Notes

Unreasonable Impact runs three regional programmes annually across the UK and Europe, the Americas, and Asia Pacific and Middle East, bringing together a select group of fast-growth businesses with a handpicked community of mentors, investors and specialists.  In 2023, the partnership was extended for five years with a commitment to support 200 new ventures by the end of 2027.

A number of Unreasonable Impact ventures have also been supported by Barclays Climate Ventures, and some are used in Barclays’ own operations today.

Other notable Unreasonable Impact alumni include Re:Dish, whose reusable dishware service at Barclays’ U.S. offices has avoided over 1 million single-use containers and cups in the last year, and Circ, which recycles polyester, cotton, and polycotton blends back into high-quality materials and is the only in-market solution that recovers both fibers from polycotton, working with brands such as Zara, Target, Mara Hoffman, and Christian Siriano.

Find out more in the latest Impact Report.