Redefining Climate Capital with Übermorgen Ventures

In conversation with Alexander Langguth

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Investing in a World of Constrained Capital

In a venture landscape adjusting to tighter capital, shifting hype cycles, and geopolitical fragmentation, few investors articulate the moment as clearly as Alexander Langguth, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Übermorgen Ventures.

For Langguth, 2025 marked the beginning of what he calls an era of “Resource Realism.” Capital is no longer cheap, supply chains are no longer globally optimized, and sustainability must in fact be considered a strategic imperative.

Übermorgen Ventures is navigating this environment by redefining fund structures, doubling down on deep tech, and investing at the frontier to generate returns and create long-term systemic impact.

Economic Outlook

Now, high capital costs are the new normal, and geopolitical volatility has shifted focus from global cost-optimization to regional resilience. This has significant implications for climate tech businesses and venture capital alike.

Langguth notes, “With capital being expensive, the green premium is effectively dead. Climate tech has shifted from an ethical mandate to radical efficiency, where sustainability is a welcomed byproduct.”

This realignment, however, also opens massive opportunities for early-stage investors. The circular economy has become a strategic tool for de-risking supply chains, while unlocking AI’s full potential depends on stable, carbon-free power. “By integrating AI into physical manufacturing processes, we are driving down industrial costs while creating systems that are both less wasteful and resilient to global shifts,” Langguth explains.

As environmental risks become daily hazards, climate adaptation has shifted from a sustainability goal to a non-discretionary requirement for business continuity. “We choose to see opportunity in this new era, deploying capital into companies that embrace these developments to generate superior financial returns alongside meaningful climate impact,” Langguth adds.

Fund Strategy & Stage Focus

Übermorgen Ventures is a high-conviction, patient partner for early-stage companies, primarily entering at Pre-Seed and Seed stages, with reserves to remain involved for the long-term.

Langguth clarifies, “As an entrepreneurial team, we bring a builder’s spirit into the boardroom, backed by a unique semi-liquid, open-ended fund structure that grants us the luxury of extreme patience. This structure allows us to stay aligned with our founders for as long as it takes to harvest the full potential of each business, unrestricted by the lifecycles of traditional VC vehicles.” The firm maintains a generalist mandate within climate impact, reflecting the systemic nature of decarbonization.

Industry & Technology Focus

Übermorgen Ventures focuses on five core engines of the future economy:

Energy systems & electrification
Artificial intelligence & compute
Advanced manufacturing & robotics
Advanced materials & chemistry
Biotech & bio-engineering

“Carbon-free power is fundamental to unlocking both digital and physical worlds,” Langguth notes. AI acts as a general-purpose productivity engine, optimizing everything from energy grids to molecular discovery. Advanced manufacturing and robotics represent the frontier of “Physical AI,” while next-generation materials, like battery cathodes and rare-earth-free magnets, underpin electrification. At the same time, AI and datacenters are a massive consumer of energy.

Early-stage investing entails technical, commercial, and team risks, but entering at low valuations allows each investment to be a potential capital multiplier. Übermorgen’s diverse investment portfolio spreads bets across fields and stages to diversify risk while maintaining exposure to transformative growth opportunities.

Key Investment Themes

Übermorgen’s strategy is guided by a dual mandate: maximize financial returns while reducing atmospheric carbon concentrations.

“Impact only scales when built on economic viability. Strong unit economics are the first filter. Only after assessing the commercial ‘right to win’ do we evaluate how growth compounds climate impact,” Langguth explains.

Innovation and scalable business models are tools for radical decarbonization and resilient supply chains, not ends in themselves. Profitability and decarbonization reinforce each other, rather than compete. This is often misunderstood by many investors and market participants.

Ecosystem & Co-Investment Dynamics

Collaboration is embedded in Übermorgen’s DNA. The fund actively manages a network of over 3,000 co-investors including early-stage VCs to global institutions and family offices, and engages a core group of 400 partners quarterly to share insights, deal flow, and prepare portfolio companies for follow-on rounds.

The firm also maintains close ties to academia and the broader innovation ecosystem, participating in spin-off programs, industry events, and conferences to identify the innovators of “Übermorgen” today. Langguth will be attending the ALLIANCE FOR GOOD Business and Philanthropy Forum in 2026 to forge connections with visionary founders, VCs, family offices and UHNWIs.

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Track Record & Lessons Learned

Collectively, Übermorgen’s team has built 21 companies, invested in 130+ startups, and exited 18 companies. Key success factors include:

Strong founder-market fit including access to “earned secrets” overlooked by others
Capital efficiency over growth-at-all-costs
Large addressable markets
Technical defensibility
Ecosystem readiness

The most common cause of failure is premature scaling with excessive expenditure before achieving product-market fit and founder rigidity when strategic pivots are needed urgently.

Future of Venture Capital

Europe faces a chronic exit drought, with domestic IPO markets shallow and LPs overexposed to illiquid private assets. IPOs like Klarna and Navan, and acquisitions such as Nextthink, offer cautious optimism.

Übermorgen’s semi-liquid, open-ended structure addresses these challenges. Langguth explains, “Moving away from rigid 10-year fund cycles is critical for deep-tech and climate investments, where commercialization timelines rarely fit traditional VC lifespans.” The model provides LPs early exposure, structured redemption options, and a pathway to value creation without forced fire-sale exits.

“Our structure provides LPs with immediate exposure to an established portfolio, allowing them to bypass the traditional “valley of tears” of the J-Curve. Moreover, our LPs have the option to redeem their positions annually after an initial six-year lock-up, giving them more control and access to more predictable pathway to DPI”, he adds.

Key Insights

Fastest Exit: Einhundert Energy in under three years, driven by execution in a high-demand solar market. “Speed is not a metric we optimize for; quick wins are nice but we like to stay engaged for the long-term to maximize value capture,” affirms Langguth.
Impact Investments: InPlanet (enhanced rock weathering), Ostrom (digital green energy platform), Marathon Fusion (advanced fuel processing for fusion energy).
Most Profitable: Gigablue, scaling marine carbon removal via precision ocean fertilization, is a noteworthy example. Success driven by execution-focused teams with strong technical defensibility and compelling unit economics.
Balancing Returns and Impact: Ubermorgen uses economic viability and strong unit economics as the primary filters for investments and ensures that these metrics are directly linked to measurable decarbonization so that impact scales alongside financial returns.

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Conclusion: Building the Day After Tomorrow

In German, Übermorgen means “the day after tomorrow” which is an apt name for a fund investing in high-potential sectors while addressing some of today’s most pressing challenges.

Langguth’s thesis is pragmatic: “Climate tech is no longer a category in itself. It is embedded in every aspect of the economy.” In a world of constrained capital, fractured geopolitics, and rising environmental risk, only technologies that are efficient, resilient, and economically superior will survive and provide scalable financial impact and meaningful environmental impact.

By aligning AI with human decision making and market realities, seeking to develop carbon-free power, and transforming waste with potentially useful applications, Übermorgen Ventures demonstrates that patient, intelligently structured capital can be the ultimate source of competitive advantage in the age of “Resource Realism”.