Flood safety company Terranova is ready to “reshape the world” in 2025, with $7 million raised from VCs and angel investors. Founder and CEO Laurence Allen (Mechanical Engineering ‘24), who was a finalist in Collider Cup XV with this startup last fall, plans to use this prime time to expand Terranova’s projects.
“We closed the round over three times oversubscribed,” Allen said. “We’re actively looking for new projects to begin in Q1 of 2026. “We’re hoping to do lots of commercial elevation projects for flood prevention, for development, for wetland restoration, in the Bay Area and outside.”
The company has been building momentum nonstop – they closed a deal with a major natural disaster mitigation company just hours before interviewing for this announcement.
Allen points to a resurgence in investor interest for deep tech companies: “They have modes that are more protectable, and they’re solving really big problems that people care about.”
The round was co-led by Outlander and Congruent Ventures, a UC Regents anchored fund. Additional investors include Galvanize Climate’s Ponderosa Ventures and GoAhead Ventures.
Terranova’s success comes at a crucial time for flood prevention.
“We had State Treasurer Fiona Ma at our office the other day,” Allen explained. “We’re talking to her about the prediction that California is more likely than not to have a major loss of life event from flooding, plus a trillion dollars in damage from compounding levee failure, in the next 40 years.”
With the stakes this high, Terranova stands out for being “affordable, convenient, and safe,” Allen said. Their large-scale land elevation technology allows for minimal surface and infrastructure disturbance, rapidly increasing the flood safety of targeted areas on a large scale.
To Allen, the issue of flood prevention carries personal weight. His hometown of San Rafael is deep in a flood zone. “We’re about six feet under sea level in our entire downtown canal district,” he said. “[The city has] a number of issues: an elevation problem caused by subsidence due to being built on fill, compounded with a pretty risky sea wall system that they have enacted, a dike and levee system, and frequent pump failures. We took a first principles approach to figure out how we could solve this problem for our city.”
Allen ideated solutions during his SpaceX internship in 2021, filing patents and doing initial prototyping. He founded Terranova (then Levitree) as a UC Berkeley undergraduate with support from resources like SCET, Berkeley Skydeck, and Bakar Labs.
Alongside events and promotion, Terranova is anticipating large development, restoration, and municipal projects next year.
“We’ve had a lot of fun,” Allen said. “We’ve been able to bring this technology that at first seemed like science fiction into reality. Took a lot of long nights sleeping in trucks at the pilot site to get it done, but we’re at a place now where we feel we can commercialize this, bring this into places near you, and solve major flood problems around the world.”
Flood safety company Terranova is ready to “reshape the world” in 2025, with $7 million raised from VCs and angel investors. Founder and CEO Laurence Allen (Mechanical Engineering ‘24), who was a finalist in Collider Cup XV with this startup last fall, plans to use this prime time to expand Terranova’s projects.
“We closed the round over three times oversubscribed,” Allen said. “We’re actively looking for new projects to begin in Q1 of 2026. “We’re hoping to do lots of commercial elevation projects for flood prevention, for development, for wetland restoration, in the Bay Area and outside.”
The company has been building momentum nonstop – they closed a deal with a major natural disaster mitigation company just hours before interviewing for this announcement.
Allen points to a resurgence in investor interest for deep tech companies: “They have modes that are more protectable, and they’re solving really big problems that people care about.”
The round was co-led by Outlander and Congruent Ventures, a UC Regents anchored fund. Additional investors include Galvanize Climate’s Ponderosa Ventures and GoAhead Ventures.
Terranova’s success comes at a crucial time for flood prevention.
“We had State Treasurer Fiona Ma at our office the other day,” Allen explained. “We’re talking to her about the prediction that California is more likely than not to have a major loss of life event from flooding, plus a trillion dollars in damage from compounding levee failure, in the next 40 years.”
With the stakes this high, Terranova stands out for being “affordable, convenient, and safe,” Allen said. Their large-scale land elevation technology allows for minimal surface and infrastructure disturbance, rapidly increasing the flood safety of targeted areas on a large scale.
To Allen, the issue of flood prevention carries personal weight. His hometown of San Rafael is deep in a flood zone. “We’re about six feet under sea level in our entire downtown canal district,” he said. “[The city has] a number of issues: an elevation problem caused by subsidence due to being built on fill, compounded with a pretty risky sea wall system that they have enacted, a dike and levee system, and frequent pump failures. We took a first principles approach to figure out how we could solve this problem for our city.”
Allen ideated solutions during his SpaceX internship in 2021, filing patents and doing initial prototyping. He founded Terranova (then Levitree) as a UC Berkeley undergraduate with support from resources like SCET, Berkeley Skydeck, and Bakar Labs.
Alongside events and promotion, Terranova is anticipating large development, restoration, and municipal projects next year.
“We’ve had a lot of fun,” Allen said. “We’ve been able to bring this technology that at first seemed like science fiction into reality. Took a lot of long nights sleeping in trucks at the pilot site to get it done, but we’re at a place now where we feel we can commercialize this, bring this into places near you, and solve major flood problems around the world.”