👋 Welcome back. This week the money did the talking — a nuclear IPO, a water-pump takeover, and the two biggest agricultural carbon deals anyone's put on paper. Grab a coffee; this is about a four-minute read.

Thin Harvest strips the ocean out of iGrow's August ledger and looks at land-based agriculture alone: $670 million across 25 funding actions, with debt desks and government ministries — not venture term sheets — writing the biggest checks. It's a sharp step down from July's $1.89 billion, and a data-rich look at how agriculture's capital structure is quietly changing shape.

Franklin Electric made the week's cleanest acquisition, paying $350 million in cash plus an earnout of up to $50 million for Cat Pumps and folding high-pressure, high-uptime pump technology into its water-systems platform.

Nuclear supplied the drama. Holtec Nuclear launched an IPO targeting up to ~$900 million on Nasdaq under ticker HNUC, valuing the spent-fuel storage and SMR developer at about $10.2 billion. Days earlier, HGP Intelligent Energy — a Texas developer building reactors that follow data-center load — agreed to go public via a $1.2 billion SPAC merger with Meshflow Acquisition Corp.

Why it matters: Both nuclear deals are explicitly pitched at AI data-center power demand. When two reactor developers hit the public markets in the same week, the "nuclear-for-compute" thesis has stopped being a pitch-deck slide and started pricing itself.

Elsewhere, water utility Missouri American Water closed its $34.5 million purchase of the City of Neosho's water and wastewater systems, adding roughly 10,800 customers, and Japan's Kyushu Electric Power moved its solid-state battery tie-up with Taiwan's ProLogium toward outright capital participation.

Ecobat completed the sale of its lithium-recycling business — including its plant in [Casa Grande, Arizona] — exiting the segment entirely to refocus on its core lead operations. Terms weren't disclosed.

Water led the raises: Wint pulled in $36 million in a Series D led by LIP Ventures and Inven Capital to take its leak-detection platform global. On the energy side, the U.S. Department of Energy closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion for NextEra Energy to restart the 615 MW Duane Arnold plant, and Catalyst Power secured a $15 million revolving credit facility from East West Bank for distributed generation.

Venture checks stayed busy lower down the stack. MCatalysis closed a $5 million seed to make below-commodity-cost drop-in fuels; voice-AI-for-farmers startup Tellia raised $5 million pre-seed led by Revent; China's i2Cool banked a Series B from TopoScend Capital for electricity-free radiative cooling; and Innventure launched its Food & Agtech Fund II. Grants rounded it out, with Napa Green awarded $3 million to expand regenerative vineyard practices. Materials startup BIOWEG paired the two, backing what it calls Europe's largest bacterial-cellulose plant in Germany with €35 million (~$41 million).

Solar set the pace: Georgia Power won approval for 1,137 MW of new solar, its largest-ever procurement, while Cypress Creek Energy brought its 104 MWdc Ostrea project online in [Washington] under a Microsoft PPA and Inox Solar Americas signed an 800 MW U.S. module supply deal. Nuclear kept its momentum beyond the IPOs, with Centrus Energy signing a long-term HALEU supply deal for Radiant's microreactors. Hydrogen stayed active as Metacon launched higher-density electrolyser stacks, Nel ASA named Hydrasun its European integration partner, and Amogy and LOTTE Fine Chemical signed an ammonia-to-power MOU in South Korea. Storage and grid buildout filled in the rest: Ingeteam won a ~€25 million (~$29 million) battery order from Iberdrola, B2U energized a second repurposed-battery site in [Texas], Great Basin Transmission broke ground on a 285-mile line linking [Idaho, Nevada], and Reactivate signed The Obama Foundation as anchor for Illinois community solar. And Yara International inaugurated what it bills as Europe's largest industrial carbon-capture facility in [Sluiskil, Netherlands], feeding Northern Lights storage.

Envocore was picked for a $129 million program to replace about 1.5 million water meters across all of Puerto Rico. Miranda Water Technologies is deploying decentralized wastewater treatment for the Curve Lake First Nation in [Ontario, Canada], Carolina Water Service completed $8 million of plant upgrades in [North Carolina], and ChemTreat was named Dow's preferred water-treatment provider in [Ohio], deepening a partnership aimed squarely at AI data-center cooling.

Carbon dealmaking dominated the beat. Beyond the Mitti Labs–Google rice-methane pact, Agreena signed a record 4.45 million-tonne soil-carbon agreement across 1.6 million hectares in Kazakhstan — the largest agricultural carbon deal disclosed to date. Big ag reshuffled its shelves too: Corteva and Globachem formed a 50/50 crop-protection joint venture, Bayer and Neste finalized a deal to scale winter canola as biofuel feedstock, and Amoeba signed Syngenta to distribute its biofungicide across Europe. On the product line, AMVAC launched its Duro LQ corn-rootworm insecticide, KUHN debuted what it calls the largest mounted disc mower, and BioWorks rolled out a drought-oriented microbial inoculant. And in controlled environments, NY Sun Works opened 51 new hydroponic classrooms across [New York] while Agroz locked in a multi-year Malaysian produce supply deal and CME Group moved to take over Europe's dairy-futures complex.

Where the sectors gather next — upcoming events from the iGrowNews events board:

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