Artyc: Building a Climate Company When Climate Isn’t Cool

Hannah Sieber, cofounder and CEO of Artyc, set out from Stanford to build a mission-driven company tackling the “invisible” cold chain that moved food and life-saving medicine, after seeing both the climate footprint of refrigeration and the real-world fragility exposed by COVID-era vaccine spoilage and California power outages. Drawing on her background scaling EcoFlow and her expertise in batteries, Sieber founded Artyc as a Public Benefit Corporation to develop battery-powered, reusable, data-enabled cold-chain packaging that improved temperature reliability and regulatory traceability while reducing single-use waste from styrofoam and dry ice. Artyc raised a $3.2 million seed round in 2022 and a $9 million Series A in 2023 led by climate-focused investors, and learned to balance stakeholders by emphasizing operational reliability and “waste reduction” to procurement-driven customers while foregrounding climate impact in recruiting and fundraising.

By mid-2024, however, shifting venture markets and U.S. politics began to challenge whether Artyc could keep purpose and financing aligned. At a June 2024 board meeting, an investor urged Artyc to reposition from climate tech to supply chain tech to survive tightening capital markets and anticipated political backlash, a proposal that would require scrubbing climate language and sustainability initiatives that anchored the company’s identity. After Donald Trump’s re-election and rapid policy shifts in early 2025, advisors and investors warned that explicit climate messaging could become a liability, while Artyc’s leadership team argued that downplaying mission risked culture erosion and weakened recruiting for a team drawn to climate and resilience impact. With less than 10 months of runway by August 2025 and a hostile fundraising environment for capital-intensive climate hardware, Sieber began preparing for a Series B while weighing what capital to pursue and how to frame Artyc’s story. A newly awarded $300,000 National Science Foundation grant offered potential extension to a multi-million dollar award in 2026, but was not assured. Sieber had to decide how central climate and sustainability should be in Artyc’s fundraising narrative, which investors to target, and how to protect the company’s mission while ensuring its survival.