Despite the widespread perception that interest in clean technology has cooled, the cleantech sector has attracted more than $480 billion in funding since 2015, including an average of $70 billion per year between 2023 and 2025.
While the funding surge during the “boom” years of 2021 and 2022 has subsided, investment in today’s “postboom” era remains nearly four times the historical average. Top-performing companies today are finding ways to do things cheaper, faster, and better, according to McKinsey research. Indeed, “Cheaper, Faster, Better” was the theme of McKinsey’s 2026 Green Business Building (GBB) Global Summit in Stockholm on May 19. The summit brought together around 400 business leaders and sustainability experts for discussions on the state of cleantech in today’s geopolitically uncertain world.
Cheaper, faster, better
A clear takeaway from the summit was that the cleantech sector is maturing. Capital is moving away from early-stage experimentation and toward a more diverse set of companies that are ready to scale operations. This trend is reflected in the average deal size, which has grown from under $5 million in 2015 to $16 million in 2025. The keynote and breakout sessions highlighted how companies are achieving the three pillars of success:
- Cheaper. First and foremost, cost competitiveness is nonnegotiable. The data reveal that top performers are highly strategic about their target markets; they are twice as likely to operate in subsegments where the cost of their clean technology is already lower than, or on par with, the incumbent alternative. These leaders focus on relentlessly driving costs down through innovative product design, simplified manufacturing processes, and aggressive economies of scale.
- Faster. Speed is critical, but success depends on maintaining the right pace. The most successful organizations are deliberate in advancing their technology while ensuring their business models are commercially validated. Avoiding common pitfalls—such as allowing fundraising to outpace operational readiness or taking on excessive technology risk without commercial validation—is paramount.
- Better. Leading companies build a durable competitive moat by offering advanced features, superior operational performance, and highly innovative business models. They do not rely on sustainability alone to sell their products.
In his keynote presentation, McKinsey Senior Partner Stefan Helmcke emphasized that sustainable technologies succeed not simply because they are cleaner, but because they deliver superior value to customers. The cleantech leaders attracting the most capital today are those that combine cost competitiveness, speed of execution, and differentiated offerings. As Helmcke summarized, “Many people can do cheaper. Doing it faster and better as well—that is the art.” His message captured a central theme of the summit: As the sector matures, commercial excellence and operational execution are becoming just as important as technological innovation.
The cleantech opportunity to power AI
Another focal point of the 2026 summit was how artificial intelligence infrastructure and growing power demand will shape green businesses. Meeting the electricity demand expected from data centers by 2030 will likely require a nearly threefold increase in electricity generation, equivalent to more than 5 percent of global power demand. Citing recent research he coauthored, McKinsey Senior Partner Mark Patel noted that global investment in data centers could exceed $7 trillion between 2025 and 2030.
This means that the primary bottleneck for delivering new data centers is “time to power.” The development timelines for essential energy infrastructure, such as transmission networks and new power plants, stretch for years—far longer than the rapid innovation cycles of the chips driving AI growth.
This environment creates strong pressure to improve energy efficiency. This could include innovations in compute, software, and memory and networking. The keynote highlighted several emerging technologies with the potential to deliver a step change in performance per watt by 2030, including processing in memory, photonic compute, and quantum computing. These new paradigms could offer energy-efficiency improvements of two- to 1,000-fold.
Patel emphasized, “The key metric is time to power, not time to chips.” His remarks highlighted how access to energy, not just advances in semiconductors, will increasingly shape the pace and economics of AI adoption. This session made it clear that the future of AI is inextricably linked to the future of energy-efficiency innovation. AI’s power needs and its potential to build cheaper, faster, and better businesses permeated many of the conversations among participants at the summit.
Exploring critical sectors in depth
Breakout sessions explored the development of circular materials for supply chain resilience, biotechnology innovations for competitive industrial solutions, and the critical enablers for scaling industrial heat at lower cost and carbon intensity. “In the biotech breakout, something magical happened,” Patel observed. “A company, its potential customer, and an investor were all on the same panel for the same technology. The thread among them was amazing: ‘The three of us are going to make the product work.’”
Even amid geopolitical uncertainty, participants at the Stockholm summit expressed optimism about where innovation will lead the energy transition. By developing solutions that are cheaper, faster, and better, the cleantech sector can sustain its growth. Participants left the summit with new connections and new strategies.
“We have all gained important experience over the years,” said McKinsey Partner Anna Granskog. “When the 400 of us meet again next year, we’ll have 400 person years of additional wisdom. The dialogue is getting more and more mature. We are all learning very quickly.”
Reflecting on the summit, Helmcke said, “I’ve come out so energized by all of the solutions presented and by the investors willing to finance them. It’s truly exciting to see the level of resources, ingenuity, and leadership here to create solutions where others see only problems.”