The chosen companies will collaborate with experts throughout the program to remove obstacles they have encountered. This is a week-long stay filled with mentorship, investor guidance, seminars, and industry deep dives.

Through the Unreasonable network, each of the businesses will continue to have access to expert advise from over 1,700 investors and 1,000 mentors, many of whom are colleagues at Barclays, after the program ends.


"Barclays is providing expertise to nurture climate tech and other sustainability-focused ventures at each stage of their journey as they scale from idea to IPO," said Deborah Goldfarb, global head of citizenship at Barclays. We are enabling entrepreneurs to address important social and environmental issues by providing them with access to our network of mentors, investors, and ecosystem through our collaboration with Unreasonable Group.

The projects of this year provide solutions that range from compostable packaging to AI that reduces food waste.

Making a constructive influence

The UK and Europe cohort of 2024 has more than half female members or different backgrounds. Together, they have raised more than $400 million (£300 million) to date, and in 2023 they will bring in $47 million (£37 million).

Over 25,000 people are currently employed by the Unreasonable Impact businesses, which have raised over $11 billion in total since their founding. Together, these businesses have stated that their goods and services have stopped 89 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from being released. Ventures reported reducing and preventing three million metric tons of garbage in 2023.


"Unreasonable Impact, in partnership with Barclays, is committed to empowering 13 visionary entrepreneurs with scalable solutions to address urgent global challenges," said Daniel Epstein, CEO of Unreasonable Group. We seek to catalyze significant change by offering mentorship, vital resources, and access to a worldwide network. This will address societal and environmental concerns and promote job development.

Through the Unreasonable Impact program, Barclays and Unreasonable hope to assist 200 more entrepreneurs over the course of five years, after reaching their initial target of supporting 250 companies by the end of 2022.
 

Over 300 projects have benefited from the program since its launch in 2016. A portion of them have been utilised in Barclays' current operations, and some have also benefited from funding provided by the company under its Sustainable Impact Capital objective.

making a "meaningful" contribution to solving pressing global issues

Constellr, a thermal data business, is one of the 13 companies participating in the initiative, which aims to facilitate insights into the water, energy, and carbon cycles of our world. Crop failure can be avoided and food security can be supported, for instance, by monitoring the vegetation and soil. The CEO of constellr, Max Gulde, is passionate about addressing food security and climate change and has over ten years of expertise in research across multiple sectors.
 

"I'm excited about Constellr joining Unreasonable Impact UK & Europe; our space-based temperature monitoring to enhance food security aligns seamlessly with the program's mission," Gulde said, expressing his excitement for the effort.

"By 2050, we want to enable effective resource management to sustain 10 billion people in the face of climate change. Working with mentors, fellow entrepreneurs, and industry experts excites me. By working together, we can effectively address pressing global issues while simultaneously scaling Constellr's growth.
 

Taking part in initiatives

The twelve other businesses that are a part of the program are:

• Regenerative agriculture is made possible by Agricarbon, which offers reasonably priced soil carbon assessment to confirm carbon reductions.
• Better Dairy uses less greenhouse gas emissions and doesn't employ animals in the production of its dairy products.
• Chatterbox provides a language-learning platform for professionals and students by using the linguistic abilities of underrepresented groups.
• Enough, which uses natural sugars from grains and fungus to create ABUNDA, a sustainable protein.
• Land Life is a company that specializes in large-scale, sustainable replanting using cutting-edge technologies to repair damaged land.
• Mimbly, a company that creates laundry-specific products, uses recycling, filtration, and networking to enable the best possible water consumption.
• Nuada is a company that manufactures energy-efficient carbon capture devices to lessen challenging industrial emissions.
• Plend is an open banking lender with the goal of enabling more people to obtain affordable and easily accessible credit.
• Construction teams can track and manage cost, quality, and carbon with the help of Qualis Flow, which gives them access to data.
• Shellworks is a company that creates innovative materials and packaging that perform similarly to plastic but produce no trash at all, no matter where they are used.
• The company Vertical Future creates, produces, and installs self-sufficient indoor vertical farms with the goal of enhancing both human and environmental health.
• Winnow uses AI to find and cut down on food waste in the kitchen and provides useful information for the hospitality sector.