After experiencing the hottest year on record in 2023, the technology industry is continuing to invest in climate tech innovations. The latest such efforts come from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which today shared the chosen participants of its Compute for Climate Fellowship.

The Compute for Climate Fellowship, in partnership with the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), funds proofs of concept (POCs) for novel innovations that use cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and high performance computing (HPC) to address major challenges associated with climate change.

After a competitive selection process in 2023, with a 5.7% acceptance rate, AWS awarded Coastal Carbon, Phytoform, Realta Fusion and Xatoms with training, mentoring and technology in quantum computing, HPC, AI/ML (machine learning), generative AI (genAI) and AWS cloud credits to fund the process of building their POC.

“At AWS, we want to help climate tech startups move even faster with our advanced computing services,” AWS’ Lisbeth Kaufman said.

The fellowship is now accepting applications through June 7, 2024, for the second cohort of startups.

Monitoring natural carbon sinks with HPC

Coastal Carbon is a Canadian startup building AI models that measure underwater vegetation growth and the associated carbon sequestration. As part of the fellowship, the climate tech startup aims to increase transparency and trust in ocean-based carbon removal, opening another avenue for organizations to invest in reducing their net carbon emissions.

Coastal Carbon’s POC will use Amazon SageMaker and the cloud hyperscaler’s HPC services to measure and track ocean blue carbon and carbon removal. The ocean naturally sequesters carbon, rendering it a carbon sink, but measuring the extent of this natural process is often difficult and cost-inefficient. The POC will increase ocean monitoring and data collection capacity 1,000-fold, eliminating the need for divers to manually collect this data.

“When it comes to climate change, every second matters, and a faster POC means more tons removed, sooner,” Coastal Carbon CEO Kelly Zheng said.

Using AI to build crop resilience

U.K.-based startup Phytoform uses biotechnology, AI and agriculture to develop crop genetics that are more resilient to a climate of extreme drought, flooding and heat. “The world needs crops that can withstand the impacts of climate change,” Kaufman said.

Phytoform will use its spot in the fellowship to increase the accuracy of its AI-powered pipeline CRE.AI.TIVE to gain better insights from plant genomics and create new characteristics to build crop resilience.

“The Compute for Climate Fellowship is absolutely crucial for Phytoform's mission of improving sustainability in agriculture,” Phytoform CTO Nicolas Kral said. “With the help from AWS and IRCAI, we were able to really accelerate our solution to deploy a unique approach to enhance R&D.”

Simulating fusion energy in the cloud

Realta Fusion, based out of Wisconsin, is a Series A-stage company developing a path to commercial deployment of compact magnetic mirror fusion energy systems.

As part of the fellowship, the company is developing a plasma stability simulation in the cloud with AWS EC2 HPC instances and the hyperscaler’s Elastic Fabric Adapter. Plasma stability is a necessary design component for fusion power plants.

Prior to this POC, only two supercomputers in the U.S. were capable of handling these simulations. “Such intensive plasma physics simulations have never been done in the cloud before,” Realta Fusion Chief Scientific Officer Cary Forest said. But advances in the cloud “have paved a new pathway for Realta Fusion to expedite research in magnetic confinement fusion energy systems,” Forest said.

Quantum technology for water treatment

Canadian water treatment startup Xatoms is tapping AI and quantum computing technologies to find molecules of substances that have the ability to purify polluted water. Using AWS storage and quantum simulation software, Xatoms plans to develop an AI algorithm that analyzes large sets of chemical data, simulations and novel molecules.

With the results of this AI model, Xatoms plans to build an affordable and effective water purification technology for communities without access to potable water. The POC will target end users in developing countries with the aim to lower mortality rates and redirect time spent gathering clean water to education and entrepreneurship.

“We are proud to be backed by some of the biggest names in the industry, highlighting the urgency of addressing global water challenges affecting more than two billion people worldwide,” Xatoms CEO Diana Virgovicova said.