San Francisco just dropped another signal flare in the climate tech skyline. Class 3 Technologies, the spin-out from Arup that’s redefining how we measure climate risk in the built world, has officially stepped out of stealth and into the spotlight with a $3.5M seed round led by Powerhouse Ventures, joined by Sustainable Future Ventures and Tailwind Futures. It’s not just another funding headline, it’s the story of engineers who refused to keep modeling tomorrow’s risks with yesterday’s math.
Founded in 2023, Class 3 Technologies was built by people who’ve lived on the frontlines of structural uncertainty. CEO Ibbi Almufti, a licensed structural engineer and former head of Arup’s Risk & Resilience practice, didn’t just theorize about climate risk, he engineered around it. What started as deep R&D inside Arup’s global network became Iris, a modeling engine that treats buildings like living systems, not static spreadsheets. It quantifies how storms, floods, and heatwaves hit each component, and it translates those hits into the language execs actually understand: financial losses, downtime, and safety metrics.
The Iris platform is what happens when precision engineering meets predictive intelligence. Instead of broad-stroke “climate dashboards,” Iris drills down to the bolts and beams, delivering engineering-grade accuracy that CFOs, developers, and insurers can actually bet on. The team didn’t just want to make climate data look good, they wanted to make it useful. Real resilience means knowing how much risk you carry before the world tests it for you.
The investors backing this round know the stakes. Powerhouse Ventures saw the potential for a scalable, engineering-first SaaS in a trillion-dollar adaptation market. Sustainable Future Ventures and Tailwind Futures recognized that resilience isn’t a side project, it’s infrastructure’s next operating system. With support from Arup Ventures and industry leaders like Ilana Judah, this isn’t a startup guessing its way into climate tech. It’s a team bringing enterprise-grade modeling to a world that desperately needs clarity before the next storm.
Class 3 Technologies is now scaling Iris globally, building out hazard modules for wildfire, flood, and seismic risk, expanding data integration, and hiring engineering, data science, and enterprise sales talent to match their ambition. They’re not chasing hype cycles, they’re building the frameworks that will keep cities standing and businesses solvent when climate volatility isn’t a headline but a baseline.
The next generation of risk modeling won’t come from insurance averages. It’ll come from Class 3 accuracy. Congratulations to the entire team for raising $3.5M to prove that resilience can be engineered, modeled, and monetized.
