As President Trump imposes steep tariffs on steel imports, we look at venture funding to the steel sector and find startup investors have poured billions into companies focused on steel, particularly green steel.
3 Shares Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Steel — an industry on the cutting edge of innovation back in the 1850s — might not seem like an obvious target for venture investment today. Funding data, however, paints a different picture. Over the past few years, startup investors have poured billions into companies focused on the steel sector, with an emphasis on green steel. To illustrate, below we put together a list of 11 companies funded in the past few years. It's a globally dispersed assortment, spanning from Stockholm to Boulder. We're doing this data dive now because steel is in the news. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he plans to impose a 25% tariff on all imports of steel and aluminum. The news sent shares of American steel producers soaring higher, while nations that export to the U.S. are expected to see revenues decline. The move, though apparently unrelated to happenings in the startup sphere, comes amid a period of heightened interest in the steel space from venture and growth investors. Last year and this year have been particularly busy, with both mega-sized equity and debt financing deals getting done. Sweden's Stegra in the lead The biggest chunk of funding by far has gone to Stockholm-based Stegra (formerly H2 Green Steel),…