20 August 2025

On 19 August 2025, the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) and Greentown Labs announced a strategic partnership designed to fast-track collaborations between startups and corporates in the climatetech sector. The alliance aims to bridge the gap between breakthrough innovators and established multinationals, creating new pathways for scaling solutions that can accelerate decarbonisation and sustainability worldwide.

To understand what this collaboration means in practice, MoveTheNeedle.news spoke with Aisling Carlson, Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Investor Programmes at Greentown Labs. Carlson oversees the incubator’s corporate partner relationships, open-innovation programming, and connections with investors.

Greentown’s Mission: Accelerating Climatetech Innovation

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, Greentown Labs has grown into the largest climatetech and energy startup incubator in the world. In 2021, it expanded to Houston, Texas—placing itself at the heart of the US energy transition. Greentown now supports more than 200 active startups and has nurtured over 625 since its inception. Collectively, these startups have created more than 16,500 jobs and raised upwards of $9.6 billion in funding.

Despite its size, Greentown maintains a clear and focused mission: to accelerate climatetech innovation and commercialisation by empowering entrepreneurs and enabling collaboration.

Carlson explains:

“Greentown convenes the climatetech ecosystem to provide entrepreneurs the community, connections, and resources they need to thrive. Our startups are innovating to decarbonise the key greenhouse-gas emitting sectors—agriculture, buildings, electricity, manufacturing, and transportation—and enable resilient, adaptive communities.”

What makes Greentown unique, she says, is its infrastructure and community. The organisation provides not only coworking space but also fully equipped machine shops, electronics labs, and testing facilities. Just as crucial is its network of corporate partners, investors, and philanthropists who engage with entrepreneurs to pilot, finance, and adopt solutions.

Why GeSI? Timing and Fit

“Greentown’s partnerships programme is formulated around the conviction that corporates have a major role to play in decarbonising the global economy and advancing climatetech innovations,” Carlson tells us. “GeSI shares this belief and is focused on mobilising sustainable solutions across industries, making our two organisations a natural fit.”

Founded in 2001, GeSI has long been a convening body for ICT and digital solution providers committed to sustainability. Its members include major multinationals spanning telecoms, technology, and industrial sectors. The organisation has been instrumental in articulating the enabling role of digital solutions—from data platforms to artificial intelligence—in achieving climate goals.

The timing of the collaboration is no accident. As the urgency of meeting net-zero targets intensifies, both Greentown and GeSI recognise that scaling innovation requires closer ties between nimble startups and globally integrated corporates.

Unlocking Value for Startups

What does this mean for the startups inside Greentown’s incubators? According to Carlson, the benefits are substantial.

“Startups bring speed, creativity, and breakthrough technologies. Corporates bring scale, infrastructure, and access to real-world deployment,” she says. “At Greentown, we’ve seen again and again that these partnerships can unlock transformational progress.”

For many early-stage companies, the challenge is not building a working prototype—it’s finding the right champion within a multinational organisation who can help bring that solution to market. That is where the GeSI partnership comes in.

“This partnership with GeSI brings the initiative’s fantastic portfolio of corporate members into the fold, unlocking opportunities for introductions, relationship-building, and collaborations with Greentown startups across a variety of industries and geographies,” Carlson explains.

In practice, this could mean pilot projects in new regions, investments from international corporates, or joint development agreements that allow climatetech startups to scale outside North America.

The Digital Thread in Climatetech

One of GeSI’s key priorities has always been the enabling role of digital technologies in sustainability. From the use of AI in energy optimisation to IoT-enabled monitoring in agriculture, the digital layer increasingly underpins climatetech innovation.

Greentown’s perspective is well aligned. “Digital solutions play a critical role in climatetech innovation,” Carlson notes. “Most of our members have a digital component to their solutions, and countless incorporate AI, machine learning, data-driven platforms, and more into their technologies.”

By connecting startups that are already integrating digital tools with corporates deeply invested in ICT, the partnership sets the stage for cross-pollination. A climatetech founder with a data-intensive platform for decarbonising manufacturing, for instance, could benefit from GeSI’s global membership of technology companies eager to integrate such solutions into their operations.

Measuring Success

Looking ahead, Carlson is clear about what success would look like three years from now.

“We would love to see several mutually beneficial collaborations form between Greentown’s startups and GeSI’s members, such as pilot projects, investments, or joint-development agreements. We’re also interested in helping more of GeSI’s members engage with Greentown.”

This vision underscores a practical approach: the partnership will not be measured by reports or statements, but by the tangible projects, deals, and collaborations that emerge.

Greentown’s Wider Role in the Ecosystem

The GeSI collaboration is the latest step in Greentown’s broader strategy to act as a catalyst for startup–corporate partnerships. Over the years, Greentown has launched themed accelerators, corporate challenges, and bespoke open-innovation programmes. These initiatives have resulted in everything from test deployments of new building materials with construction giants to pilot hydrogen projects with major energy companies.

Greentown’s model has drawn attention not only in North America but also internationally. European startups have joined its programmes to access the US market, and Asian corporates have engaged with Greentown entrepreneurs to explore decarbonisation solutions. The new GeSI partnership could act as a springboard for deeper transatlantic and global collaborations.

Carlson suggests this is just the beginning. “We’re very open to engaging with more global sustainability networks—these are groups of organisations that have already indicated their climate commitments, and Greentown can help identify impactful ways to turn those commitments into action.”

A Pivotal Moment for Climatetech

The partnership arrives at a pivotal moment. On one hand, climatetech investment has surged in recent years, with billions flowing into sectors such as clean energy, sustainable mobility, and carbon removal. On the other hand, many startups still face the “valley of death” between demonstration and commercial deployment.

By leveraging GeSI’s corporate membership and Greentown’s startup pipeline, the collaboration directly addresses this bottleneck. It provides startups with access to markets and resources, while offering corporates a channel to integrate cutting-edge solutions into their operations.

Conclusion: Turning Commitments into Action

For years, corporates have pledged ambitious sustainability goals, from achieving net zero to reducing supply chain emissions. Yet achieving these targets requires more than in-house innovation. It requires tapping into the speed and ingenuity of startups, and forging partnerships that can bring solutions to scale.

The GeSI–Greentown Labs partnership represents a concrete step in this direction. By aligning digital enablers with climatetech innovators, the two organisations hope to accelerate not just ideas, but real-world impact.

As Carlson reflects, the ultimate goal is simple:

“Our mission has always been to empower entrepreneurs and enable collaboration. With GeSI, we have the opportunity to continue extending that mission globally, helping startups and corporates alike turn climate commitments into climate action.”