The San Francisco Bay Area’s climate-tech sector spans a wide range of categories, from enterprise emissions software and carbon removal to home electrification, wildfire intelligence, and consumer waste reduction. That breadth is part of what makes the market worth watching. Climate tech in the Bay Area is no longer confined to one type of founder or one kind of product. It now includes software platforms, industrial systems, energy hardware, and operational tools aimed at some of the most complex infrastructure challenges in the economy.
The founders below reflect that range. Some are building for large enterprises, others for utilities, homeowners, researchers, or public agencies. Together, they show how Bay Area climate tech continues to expand beyond early experimentation into categories tied more directly to energy, resilience, carbon management, and large-scale deployment.
Peter Reinhardt
CEO & Co-founder — Charm Industrial
Peter Reinhardt is the CEO and co-founder of Charm Industrial, the San Francisco carbon removal company focused on converting waste biomass into bio-oil and storing it underground. Charm has become one of the Bay Area’s most recognizable carbon removal stories, giving Reinhardt a prominent place in one of climate tech’s most closely watched categories.
Reinhardt also brings a founder background that extends beyond climate. Before Charm, he was the co-founder and CEO of Segment, which adds a notable software-company track record to his profile. That combination of enterprise software experience and carbon removal ambition makes Charm one of the more distinctive companies in the Bay Area climate market.
Nicholas Flanders
Co-Founder and CEO — Twelve
Nicholas Flanders is the co-founder and CEO of Twelve, the Berkeley climate-tech company focused on transforming carbon dioxide into fuels, chemicals, and materials. Twelve operates in a part of the market centered on industrial decarbonization, which gives the company a different profile from software-led or consumer-facing climate businesses.
Twelve’s work places Flanders in one of the more technically ambitious segments of the category. The company’s focus on turning captured carbon into useful products ties its story to long-term questions around manufacturing, energy, and the commercial use of carbon as a feedstock rather than only as a waste stream.
Arch Rao
Founder & CEO — SPAN
Arch Rao is the founder and CEO of SPAN, the San Francisco company best known for its smart electrical panels and broader push into home electrification. SPAN operates in a part of climate tech that sits close to the household energy transition, where software, hardware, utilities, and grid management increasingly overlap.
Rao’s background includes clean energy and power systems, which aligns closely with the category SPAN is building in. The company’s expansion beyond the electrical panel itself gives it a broader role in the Bay Area climate market, tying SPAN not only to electrified homes but also to the infrastructure needed to manage rising residential energy demand.
Shashank Samala
CEO & Co-Founder — Heirloom
Shashank Samala is the CEO and co-founder of Heirloom, the Brisbane, California company focused on direct air capture. Heirloom is part of a Bay Area climate-tech cohort working on carbon removal infrastructure rather than carbon accounting or consumer behavior, giving the company a more industrial profile.
Heirloom’s work is tied to one of the sector’s biggest long-term questions: whether carbon removal can move from technical promise to repeatable commercial deployment. That makes Samala a notable founder in the region, particularly as direct air capture continues to draw attention from investors, policymakers, and large corporate buyers.
Sonia Kastner
Co-Founder & CEO — Pano AI
Sonia Kastner is the co-founder and CEO of Pano AI, the San Francisco wildfire detection and intelligence company. Pano brings a climate adaptation and resilience angle to the list, broadening the feature beyond emissions, removal, and electrification. Its work is tied to wildfire detection, monitoring, and decision support for utilities, public agencies, insurers, and landowners.
That gives Kastner a distinct place in the Bay Area climate-tech market. Pano is not centered on carbon reduction alone. It is building around a real and growing operational problem tied to climate risk, which makes the company relevant not only to sustainability conversations but also to infrastructure protection and public safety.
Matt Rogers
Co-Founder & CEO — Mill
Matt Rogers is the co-founder and CEO of Mill, the Bay Area company focused on reducing food waste through a consumer-facing hardware and service system. Mill adds a different dimension to the list by bringing household waste reduction into a field often dominated by industrial and enterprise climate narratives.
Rogers also enters the feature with an established founder background, having previously co-founded Nest. That history gives Mill additional context as a climate-tech company built by a founder with experience turning hardware and home technology into widely recognized consumer products. In climate terms, Mill’s focus is narrower than grid or carbon infrastructure, but it reflects another part of the sector’s expansion: bringing climate-oriented systems into everyday household behavior.
Where Bay Area ClimateTech Keeps Expanding
The Bay Area’s climate-tech economy is no longer defined by a single thesis. Watershed is building enterprise climate software, Charm Industrial and Heirloom are focused on carbon removal, Twelve is working on carbon transformation, SPAN is tied to electrification, Pano AI is focused on wildfire intelligence, and Mill is tackling food waste. Together, those companies show how many directions the category now reaches.
That range is one reason climate tech remains a strong next-step industry to watch in the Bay Area. The sector now includes founders building for corporations, utilities, homeowners, and public agencies, all while addressing infrastructure problems that are becoming more urgent, more regulated, and more commercially significant.
The Bay Area’s innovation story also extends into automation and intelligent machines. Read the San Francisco Bay Area Robotics Founders to Watch in 2026 for another look at the founders building the next generation of autonomous systems, industrial tools, and real-world deployment platforms.
