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9 global climate innovators named finalists for $250K Wilkes Prize

At the 2026 Wilkes Climate Summit on May 13, finalists will pitch their solutions, ranging from low-carbon construction materials to cleaner chemical manufacturing and resilient agriculture.

The Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy will bring nine climate ventures from around the world to the University of Utah this month, where finalists for the $250,000 Wilkes Climate Innovation Prize will pitch solutions ranging from low-carbon construction materials to cleaner chemical manufacturing and resilient agriculture.

Eight of the nine finalist teams are expected to present in person at the Wilkes Climate Summit on May 13 at the Eccles Alumni House on the U campus. The public summit will convene policymakers, U researchers, entrepreneurs and students for conversations on climate science, policy and practical solutions.

The finalist field was selected from 504 applications. The Wilkes Center is also recognizing six semifinalists, extending the prize program’s reach beyond the nine teams advancing to the final round. An interactive world map shows where the applications originated.

On May 12, the Wilkes Center hosted an invitation-only Innovation Day for investors and climate-solution innovators. The working session is designed to help finalists and semifinalists refine their proposals, pressure-test business models and receive feedback from potential funders before the summit.

The nine finalist teams are:

  • Agros (Singapore)
  • Fabumin (Tel Aviv, Israel)
  • Gyre Energy (London, United Kingdom)
  • Solidec (Houston, Texas, United States)
  • SolidSky (Detroit, Michigan, United States)
  • uCrop.it (Lewes, Delaware, United States)
  • UnBoxed (New York, New York, United States)
  • WAS Company (Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico)
  • WoodSyn, LLC (Phoenix, Arizona, United States)

Learn more about the nine finalist teams below.

About the Wilkes Climate Innovation Prize

The Prize is designed to support solutions at a stage where potential impact is high, but uncertainty remains significant and traditional funding or adoption pathways may be limited. Eligible solutions may be technological, policy-driven, operational, financial, or hybrid.

A panel of expert judges will evaluate finalists on climate-system impact and relevance; plausibility and clarity; differentiation and quality of insight; clear co-benefits; and team expertise and organizational capability.

The Wilkes Center will announce the 2026 Climate Innovation Prize winner in September 2026.

A record of backing climate solutions

In 2025, the Wilkes Center awarded Build up Nepal the $250,000 Climate Launch Prize. The organization helps replace coal-fired bricks with lower-carbon compressed earth bricks while supporting earthquake-resilient housing in low-income communities. Its interlocking compressed stabilized earth bricks can be made with locally available materials and minimal cement, and are compressed, rather than fired.

In 2024, the Wilkes Center awarded Applied Carbon the $500,000 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize. Applied Carbon has developed a mobile, in-field system that collects post-harvest crop waste and converts it into carbon-rich biochar in a single pass. The resulting biochar is returned back to the field to support soil health, improve crop performance, reduce fertilizer needs, and provide a carbon removal and provide long-duration carbon storage.

In 2023, the Wilkes Center awarded its $1.5 million inaugural prize to Lumen Bioscience. The Seattle-based biotech company was selected from 77 international teams for its proposal to reduce methane emissions from dairy and beef cattle using a patented mixture of enzyme proteins.

The 2026 Climate Innovation Prize Finalists

Agros (Singapore)

Logo with green letters that spell Agros.
Agros supports sustainable agriculture for small and medium-sized horticulture farmers across Asia. The company is helping horticulture farmers to decarbonize, whilst doubling their profit through a full-stack solution. Its first two products, Agrosolar and Agrosoil, are solving major agriculture problems like fuel dependency and soil degradation. After switching to Agros’ ecosystem, farmers can double their profits from reduced input costs, improved yields, and higher prices from better-quality crops. Now, with subsidiaries in Myanmar, Cambodia and Indonesia, the company works with over 6,000 farmers on 13,000 hectares, aiming to impact 150,000 farmers within five years.”

Fabumin (Tel Aviv, Israel)

Logo with dark green letters that says Fabumin
Fabumin is an innovative startup transforming the food industry with unique technology that recycles cooking water from legumes (Aquafaba) into a versatile powder with properties similar to egg whites. Our technology, installable directly in legume factories, offers a circular economy solution that reduces water waste and provides a new revenue stream for the legume industry.

Gyre Energy (London, United Kingdom)

Logo with cyan letters that say Gyre Energy
Gyre Energy cuts costs for cooling-intensive operators. Cooling is 20% of global energy demand, accounting for up to 40% of electricity costs for data center operators, and up to 90% of electricity costs for cold storage operators. Gyre's platform technology leverages advanced AI and low-cost thermal storage to reduce energy use and enable large-scale distributed flexibility for cooling assets.

Solidec (Houston, Texas, United States)

Logo with cyan letters that say Solidec
Solidec is chemical manufacturing simplified. Using air, water and electricity, our autonomous generators produce the world’s most essential chemicals, on site and on demand.

SolidSky (Detroit, Michigan, United States)

Green letters that say Solid Sky, a logo.
SolidSky is solving the decarbonization of industrial chemical production, specifically the synthesis of ethylene. Conventional ethylene production requires large amounts of furnace-driven heat, leading to a CO2 footprint of more than 400 MT/yr. Ethylene demand continues to rise as margins shrink worldwide, creating a situation where operators don't have the resources to risk reducing their emissions. Current solutions fail to simultaneously address CO2 emissions and margins as a linked outcome—without increasing margins, there is no ability to invest in new infrastructure to address CO2 emissions, even with credits.

uCrop.it (Lewes, Delaware, United States)

Logo with black letters that say ucrop.it

uCrop.it is an agricultural fintech that leverages blockchain technology and certainty certification to connect medium-sized growers with investors for sharecropping production and achieve improved gross margins by means of commercial scale economies and hectares growth.

UnBoxed (New York, New York, United States)

Grey logo with 3D shapes that says unboxed.

The thing that sets UnBoxed apart is that it is an innovative disruptor. The design merges 3D printing and prefabrication technology with affordable construction to provide a low-cost and equitable solution. UnBoxed is the manufacturing process that challenges traditional construction models in affordable construction. UnBoxed is scalable from a prefabricated panel to an ADU unit to a multifamily. It is constructed using FDM printing polycarbonate that uses recycled plastic forming the structure, which is sandwiched with shredded newspaper insulation. It is designed to the strict passive house standards to save 90% energy use.

WAS Company (Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico)

Logo with black letters that say WAS co.

WAS Company is a Mexican company dedicated to the development of sustainable high-performance construction materials. Its portfolio integrates solutions based on industrial residues and technologies that contribute to decarbonizing the processes of the cement, mining and construction industries, promoting more responsible models with lower environmental impact.

WoodSyn, LLC (Phoenix, Arizona, United States)

Logo with black letters that say WoodSyn, building for the next century.

WoodSyn is an Arizona-based materials company advancing a new generation of resilient, low-carbon construction. Their OptimWall™ and OptimBoard™ systems apply proven European wood wool cement (WWC) technology to American challenges—reducing wildfire risk, cutting construction time and improving long-term housing performance.

By transforming small-diameter restoration timber—the same material that fuels catastrophic wildfires—into durable, carbon-storing panels, WoodSyn links forest health to housing resilience. The result is a building material that supports affordable and workforce housing goals while strengthening local economies and restoring Western forests.

Header photo: Björn Söderberg (right), co-founder of the 2025 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize-winner Build up Nepal, accepts the award from Fielding Norton, managing director of the Wilkes Center. Credit: Todd Anderson/University of Utah

MEDIA & PR CONTACTS

  • Ross Chambless Community Engagement Manager, Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy
    (801) 646-6067