The AI boom took over Climate Week and not everyone is happy about it

New York Climate Week had a clear favorite this year: AI. Climate tech founders, investors, and even the people grumbling about the boom all seemed to agree that data centers are now shaping the money flow in the sector. For startups that need capital to make it through the brutal early years, that has been a lifeline.

The reason is simple enough. Climate tech is full of energy-heavy businesses, so the surge in demand for power-hungry AI infrastructure gives them a story investors understand right now. Some founders are leaning into it. Others are warning that the rush to serve data centers is crowding out climate companies that are making progress without dressing themselves up in AI language.

The numbers back up the mood. Venture deal value in climate tech has climbed for four straight quarters and passed $14 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to PitchBook. That makes this the strongest fundraising stretch climate tech has seen in the last few years, with a lot of the money flowing into built environment, grid infrastructure, and dispatchable energy — the kinds of projects that can feed or support data center growth.

At one panel, two founders were asked whether they’d rather see the AI buildout happen at the current pace or slow down to be more climate-responsible. They both picked faster without missing a beat. That was telling, and not just because both startups were in energy.

But there was a limit to the enthusiasm. Several founders said the data center rush is distracting from other promising climate segments, and one pointed out that corporates still care about climate even if they’re less eager to announce it, because they don’t want to attract the Trump administration’s attention. The subtext at Climate Week was hard to miss: the AI wave is useful, maybe very useful, but no one in the room thinks it will last forever.