In Vietnam’s climate-tech scene, a founder can win a grant and, with luck, eventually land a cheque worth several million dollars. What she is increasingly unlikely to find is anything in between.
Recorded climate tech funding in Vietnam fell 52 per cent in 2025 to US$49.86 million across 33 transactions, down from US$104.20 million across 60 transactions in 2024.
The figures come from three Vietnam Climate Tech Ecosystem Reports released today by New Energy Nexus Vietnam, SNV Vietnam, World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and RMIT University Vietnam, with support from Swiss EP. The reports cover funding, workforce and women’s entrepreneurship.
Also Read: Funded: US$37 billion was promised to SEA climate, where did it go?
The headline drop overstates the decline. The 2024 total was inflated by a single US$70 million Series A for Techcoop. Strip out the largest deal in each year and funding fell a more modest 19 per cent, from US$34.2 million to US$27.86 million. The number that should worry founders is the deal count, which nearly halved. Fewer companies are getting funded at all.
The hole in the middle
The sharpest finding is about cheque size rather than volume. Not one recorded deal closed in the US$350,000 to US$1 million range in 2025, compared with four in 2024.
That band is where a climate startup typically moves from a grant-funded pilot to its first real commercial investment. It is the money that pays for the first engineers, the second installation and proof that a pilot can become a business.
“Funders told us they have money for Vietnam’s climate startups, and founders told us they need it, yet in 2025 not one recorded deal closed between US$350,000 and US$1 million,” said Thao Tran, Country Director at New Energy Nexus Vietnam.
A move from four deals to zero is a small sample, and “recorded” leaves room for undisclosed rounds. The direction still fits a familiar regional problem. These tickets are too large for grant programmes and too small to justify the diligence costs of most regional funds. The government’s interest in a Yozma-style national venture fund could, in theory, be aimed at exactly this band. Whether it will be is another matter.
Debt steps in, but one deal does the lifting
The mix of funding shifted too. Equity fell sharply, while debt financing rose from US$3 million to US$20 million. That jump was driven by a single facility for CME Solar, so the shift is better read as a signal than a trend.
Energy Transition was the one bright spot. The sector attracted US$26.71 million in 2025, up 72 per cent year-on-year, and was the only one to raise venture equity, debt and grants. That fits a broader pattern: investors are most comfortable with assets that generate measurable revenue, from rooftop solar to the EV charging race. Those are also the businesses most able to take on debt. As data centres strain regional grids, the case for clean baseload is likely to keep energy ahead of other climate verticals.
Money without people
Even where capital exists, the people to deploy it often do not. Some 73 per cent of surveyed enterprises ranked technical and engineering skills among their top three workforce needs. Half said these were the hardest skills to recruit. The reports also point to demand for interdisciplinary professionals who can work across engineering, finance and policy.
“Capital has arrived faster than the people needed to deploy it,” said Lindsay Umalla, Energy Sector Leader at SNV in Vietnam. She called for closer links between training, hiring and finance.
Also Read: Vietnam’s tech talent market is broken and most companies are still hiring the wrong way
Climate startups are competing for the same engineers as Vietnam’s booming AI and semiconductor sectors. Those sectors usually pay better and carry more prestige, and even returning engineers are proving hard to keep. Some 39 per cent of funded enterprises in the dataset already use AI in their work. When AI is having its moment, a climate hardware startup is rarely a graduate’s first choice.
Who gets left at the bottom of the ladder
The missing middle hits women hardest. Women founded about a third of Vietnam’s active climate-tech enterprises and won roughly 56 per cent of recorded grant funding in 2025. Yet they received only around 1.7 per cent of total recorded climate tech capital. By e27’s arithmetic, that is about US$850,000 out of nearly US$50 million.
Women-founded companies are clearly winning the competitive, merit-judged grant stage. They are then failing to convert that success into commercial money. The reports point to collateral requirements and a lack of financing that serves both commercial and impact goals as key barriers.
“Loans designed for young companies, financing repaid from revenue and guarantees that stand in for property collateral would carry founders across that gap,” Tran said. “They matter most for women, many of whom don’t hold the land titles banks ask for.”
When land titles are so often held in a husband’s or father’s name, a lending rule that looks gender-neutral on paper can still keep women out. It also sits awkwardly with data suggesting that women founders are doubling down while male peers lose confidence.
Not a shortage of policy
Vietnam recorded 29 climate and innovation-related policies in 2025, so the problem is not a lack of rules. The fixes Tran describes are not new either. Revenue-based financing, credit guarantees and loans for young companies already exist as financial products. What is missing is someone willing to carry the risk at a ticket size nobody finds glamorous.
Also Read: The trillion-dollar gap: How venture capital’s gender bias is stifling Southeast Asia’s potential
There is a reason for caution. The reports were compiled by organisations that run incubation and acceleration programmes, and they naturally have an interest in highlighting the gap. Still, the picture matches what founders across the region describe.
Investors have shown they will back Vietnamese startups aggressively when the story is AI or e-commerce. Plenty of climate startups across SEA are already building.
In Vietnam, the question is whether anyone will fund the climb from grant to growth, especially for founders without a land title to pledge.
The post Vietnam’s climate-tech has a missing middle, and women founders are falling into it appeared first on e27.
In Vietnam’s climate-tech scene, a founder can win a grant and, with luck, eventually land a cheque worth several million dollars. What she is increasingly unlikely to find is anything in between.
Recorded climate tech funding in Vietnam fell 52 per cent in 2025 to US$49.86 million across 33 transactions, down from US$104.20 million across 60 transactions in 2024.
The figures come from three Vietnam Climate Tech Ecosystem Reports released today by New Energy Nexus Vietnam, SNV Vietnam, World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and RMIT University Vietnam, with support from Swiss EP. The reports cover funding, workforce and women’s entrepreneurship.
Also Read: Funded: US$37 billion was promised to SEA climate, where did it go?
The headline drop overstates the decline. The 2024 total was inflated by a single US$70 million Series A for Techcoop. Strip out the largest deal in each year and funding fell a more modest 19 per cent, from US$34.2 million to US$27.86 million. The number that should worry founders is the deal count, which nearly halved. Fewer companies are getting funded at all.
The hole in the middle
The sharpest finding is about cheque size rather than volume. Not one recorded deal closed in the US$350,000 to US$1 million range in 2025, compared with four in 2024.
That band is where a climate startup typically moves from a grant-funded pilot to its first real commercial investment. It is the money that pays for the first engineers, the second installation and proof that a pilot can become a business.
“Funders told us they have money for Vietnam’s climate startups, and founders told us they need it, yet in 2025 not one recorded deal closed between US$350,000 and US$1 million,” said Thao Tran, Country Director at New Energy Nexus Vietnam.
A move from four deals to zero is a small sample, and “recorded” leaves room for undisclosed rounds. The direction still fits a familiar regional problem. These tickets are too large for grant programmes and too small to justify the diligence costs of most regional funds. The government’s interest in a Yozma-style national venture fund could, in theory, be aimed at exactly this band. Whether it will be is another matter.
Debt steps in, but one deal does the lifting
The mix of funding shifted too. Equity fell sharply, while debt financing rose from US$3 million to US$20 million. That jump was driven by a single facility for CME Solar, so the shift is better read as a signal than a trend.
Energy Transition was the one bright spot. The sector attracted US$26.71 million in 2025, up 72 per cent year-on-year, and was the only one to raise venture equity, debt and grants. That fits a broader pattern: investors are most comfortable with assets that generate measurable revenue, from rooftop solar to the EV charging race. Those are also the businesses most able to take on debt. As data centres strain regional grids, the case for clean baseload is likely to keep energy ahead of other climate verticals.
Money without people
Even where capital exists, the people to deploy it often do not. Some 73 per cent of surveyed enterprises ranked technical and engineering skills among their top three workforce needs. Half said these were the hardest skills to recruit. The reports also point to demand for interdisciplinary professionals who can work across engineering, finance and policy.
“Capital has arrived faster than the people needed to deploy it,” said Lindsay Umalla, Energy Sector Leader at SNV in Vietnam. She called for closer links between training, hiring and finance.
Also Read: Vietnam’s tech talent market is broken and most companies are still hiring the wrong way
Climate startups are competing for the same engineers as Vietnam’s booming AI and semiconductor sectors. Those sectors usually pay better and carry more prestige, and even returning engineers are proving hard to keep. Some 39 per cent of funded enterprises in the dataset already use AI in their work. When AI is having its moment, a climate hardware startup is rarely a graduate’s first choice.
Who gets left at the bottom of the ladder
The missing middle hits women hardest. Women founded about a third of Vietnam’s active climate-tech enterprises and won roughly 56 per cent of recorded grant funding in 2025. Yet they received only around 1.7 per cent of total recorded climate tech capital. By e27’s arithmetic, that is about US$850,000 out of nearly US$50 million.
Women-founded companies are clearly winning the competitive, merit-judged grant stage. They are then failing to convert that success into commercial money. The reports point to collateral requirements and a lack of financing that serves both commercial and impact goals as key barriers.
“Loans designed for young companies, financing repaid from revenue and guarantees that stand in for property collateral would carry founders across that gap,” Tran said. “They matter most for women, many of whom don’t hold the land titles banks ask for.”
When land titles are so often held in a husband’s or father’s name, a lending rule that looks gender-neutral on paper can still keep women out. It also sits awkwardly with data suggesting that women founders are doubling down while male peers lose confidence.
Not a shortage of policy
Vietnam recorded 29 climate and innovation-related policies in 2025, so the problem is not a lack of rules. The fixes Tran describes are not new either. Revenue-based financing, credit guarantees and loans for young companies already exist as financial products. What is missing is someone willing to carry the risk at a ticket size nobody finds glamorous.
Also Read: The trillion-dollar gap: How venture capital’s gender bias is stifling Southeast Asia’s potential
There is a reason for caution. The reports were compiled by organisations that run incubation and acceleration programmes, and they naturally have an interest in highlighting the gap. Still, the picture matches what founders across the region describe.
Investors have shown they will back Vietnamese startups aggressively when the story is AI or e-commerce. Plenty of climate startups across SEA are already building.
In Vietnam, the question is whether anyone will fund the climb from grant to growth, especially for founders without a land title to pledge.
The post Vietnam’s climate-tech has a missing middle, and women founders are falling into it appeared first on e27.
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