CLEANTECH GROUP NAMES THE PIONEERS WITH THE BUSINESS MODELS AND SOLUTIONS TO SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACT THE LATAM REGION OVER THE NEXT 5 –10 YEARS

Three Mexican companies figure in the list – Tierra de Monte, Agribest and AllieAI

“Our nomination process is designed to identify the most impressive early-stage high-impact solutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. We collect insights from our analysts, a global expert panel with specialist knowledge of companies and ecosystems in one or more countries across the region, and public nominations, ensuring a balanced and comprehensive evaluation.” -- Cleantech Group

Interview with Anthony DeOrsey, Cleantech Group

By Suzanne Forcese

WTMX: Please introduce yourself to our viewers and give us an overview of Cleantech Group.

DeOrsey: Cleantech Group is the human intelligence authority on global cleantech innovation. Since 2002, we’ve helped decision-makers across industry, finance, and policy navigate the rapid shifts transforming the global economy.
I manage Cleantech Group’s team of analysts, who deliver perspectives on innovation to our member base. Our analysts cover: agriculture & food; energy & power; materials & chemicals; transportation & logistics; waste & recycling.
 

WTMX: What is LATAM 25?

DeOrsey: The LATAM 25 is a list of the 25 most promising cleantech companies developing in South & Central America and the Caribbean.
The list represents more than just companies; it’s the culmination of a community-building exercise that Cleantech Group undertook in 2024 to bring together a network of pan-LATAM experts who can be a continual authority on cleantech innovation in the region.

WTMX: What is Cleantech Group's goal in the LATAM 25 report for 2025? DeOrsey: The ultimate goal is to create a “flywheel" effect, by which more spotlight on these Latin American innovators creates more global engagement with the region, and as a result incentivizes more entrepreneurs in the region to launch cleantech ventures.

We also view as part of our mission at Cleantech Group to be the global “fabric” of cleantech innovation, making our network around the world aware of trends happening elsewhere. This is indeed happening--we see a great example from the 2024 LATAM Cleantech 25 of Splight, a grid optimization company that is now growing in the U.S. and recently raised a $12.5M Series A round.

WTMX: What are you noticing about LATAM innovators?

DeOrsey: We see a clear trend of local solutions to local challenges. There are numerous examples in this year’s list of companies addressing climate resilience. As mentioned in both last year’s and this year’s trend watch, Latin America is facing direct impacts from climate change already.

According to the 2024 Trend Watch:

 “Despite being responsible for so little of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, Latin America is already experiencing an average warming trend of around 0.2°C per decade (World Meteorological Organization) and the increasing intensity of storms is creating ever-increasing economic damage (2023 Hurricane Otis caused an estimated $12B in damages).”

This is at a time when, frankly, most of the world is still slow to react to the need for climate adaptation today. The result is a cohort of LATAM-based entrepreneurs taking adaptation measures into their own hands.

The many companies tackling adaptation in agriculture & food production (agriculture, forestry, and fishing have comprised 6% or more of value added to GDP since 2020 in the region) as well as having a wildfire resilience innovator in each year’s edition (Umgraemeio, Brazil, ’24 awardee and Satellites on Fire, Argentina, ’25 awardee) underscore the motivation of entrepreneurs in the region to address adaptation issues.

WTMX: What are you seeing as far as investments are concerned?

DeOrsey: The investment numbers will tell a less compelling story, with LATAM cleantech investments still comprising only a small percentage of global investments. With that said, it’s important to note that investments are only ever a lagging indicator – the new and emerging innovators in this region will attract more investment as they begin to show progress. I’d make a few more important points here:

LATAM innovators are developing products and services at a much lower cost than their peers in North America and Europe, which, if we’re looking at urgent spaces like wildfire resilience, water resilience, and agricultural, speed-to-adoption matters.

Being cost competitive today is more important, in most cases, than having a world-beating technological breakthrough that’s cost prohibitive. I’d point to Satellites on Fire as an example of just how powerful a solution built on readily available technologies can be (refer to the case study in the report for more detail). This is something that can scale fast without need for de-risking the technology.

We should also acknowledge that many technologies being developed in North America, Europe, and North Asia, will be too costly to be deployed in the global South. There is a massive opportunity for South-to-South transfer of technologies being developed in Latin America.

WTMX: Why has crop resilience become a defining moment for Latin American innovators?

DeOrsey: From our perspective, Latin America has two tailwinds with regard to developing crop resilience innovation:

1) a wealth of hands-on experience (given the importance of agriculture as an industry in the region) and 2) a proficient and fast-improving biotechnology ecosystem.

One sees this very well displayed in the past two LATAM 25 lists, where, more than a dozen companies between the two lists are in some type of crop inputs.
What’s perhaps more interesting here is that we see LATAM-based crop science innovators spanning many different solutions, not just specializing on one area.
There is also growing promise of AI to support development here, see Calice’s (Argentina) proprietary computational field trials platform (NODES) to help agri-food companies simulate and optimize trials digitally.

While there is a great volume of agricultural resilience innovation in Latin America, we also see plenty of innovation to draw down carbon while improving agricultural yields. See examples from the past two lists of companies with technology to capture carbon in the course of farming or aquatic management: InPlanet(Brazil) on the 2025 list and SOS Carbon (Dominican Republic) on the 2024 list.

The concept of carbon farming, i.e., using inputs to farming that both improve yield and sink carbon has seen ebbs and flows over the past few years, with the principle challenge being the economics:
It is not enough, typically, to maintain a business just selling carbon credits, the co-benefits of improving yield need to be proven out too. An open question from us is whether the profitability equation can be cracked in LATAM and potentially exported globally?

WTMX: Looking specifically at Mexico -- can you tell us about Tierra de Monte please and why this start-up made the list.

DeOrsey: Tierra de Monte is developing critical solutions for pest control and nutrient absorption in crops. This is needed technology for two reasons:

1) an estimate 40% of crops are lost before harvest, globally, due to pests, every minor gain in pest resistance has significant multiplying effects in benefits,

2) With compounding effects of climate change, pest patterns change consistently and create a moving target for pest resistance treatments.

Put differently, this is a problem that’s going to require multiple layers of solutions. I’d also point out that Tierra de Monte’s biostimulants (treatments that enhance natural properties of crops) are coming in at an opportune time. Droughts, increasing temperatures, all have a negative effect on plant vigor, and the global agricultural industry will have more demand for biostimulants in coming years.
I’d also point out Agribest in Mexico – Agribest is tackling crop productivity but through a natural crop treatments pathway that reduces pollution from fertilizers. Agribest is also combining their biotechnology approaches with satellite data analytics for comprehensive assessment of crop treatment effectiveness at scale. (See pages 20-22 of LATAM 25 for a comprehensive analysis of Agribest.)

 WTMX: Climate-smart technology--AI driven infrastructure-- has been a big topic this past year. What have you noticed in the LATAM group of innovators?

DeOrsey: Right now, competing in AI requires infrastructure that offers speed-to-power, i.e., an ability to quickly connect a data center to a power supply without long build-out timelines.

Unblock Computing is a great example of resourcefulness in this regard: the company can use otherwise flared natural gas (natural gas that is not in immediate demand) and curtailed renewables to power modular data centers. Put differently, Unblock is able to convert wasted resources to valuable computation.

WTMX: Please tell us about Allie AI in Mexico and why this start-up made the list.

DeOrsey: Allie AI is an important solution to increase resource efficiency in Mexico’s robust food & beverage manufacturing industry. With the learning effects that Allie will generate from deployment in Mexico, there is a great opportunity for scaling into similar manufacturing operations globally. From a technology perspective, there are a few things that Cleantech Group finds interesting about the solution:
 Initial set-up of system requires some customization:
walkthroughs to identify key manufacturing processes & nodes but appears to integrate into existing IT infrastructure comfortably. The custom set-up does create deeper insights and a higher degree of control for plant managers.
 Hour-by-hour analysis of Overall Equipment
Effectiveness (OEE), real-time insight into the efficiency of processes and health of machines. AllieML uses machine learning to predict the likelihood and causes of downtime.
The models are continuously re-trained using streaming factory data, ensuring improved accuracy and adaptability.
 The system includes a generative AI tool that is
chat-based and can support decision-making by plant managers (not by data scientists or CFOs), this is important for gaining trust of workforce and allowing accessibility of the tools.

WTMX: Any last comments on Mexico’s trajectory as a hub for cleantech innovation?

DeOrsey: We have major confidence in Mexico as a hub for cleantech innovation in LATAM. There is already a high presence of skilled manufacturing in Mexico, and with the North American drive to “near shore” and “friend shore”
supply chains, it is highly likely that Mexico will see more manufacturing growth.

Solutions like AllieAI have high potential to accelerate efficiency in Mexico-based manufacturing.

I’d also point to the growing volume of cleantech-focused entrepreneurial support organizations (e.g., Green Momentum) and venture capital funds (Savia
Ventures) in the country, which are providing an accelerant to Mexico-based cleantech entrepreneurs.

Download the LATAM 25 report here