Leeds start-up Planetary Minds has been selected for the UK cohort of ClimateLaunchpad 2026, the world’s largest green business ideas competition.
Planetary Minds was one of just 11 UK start-ups selected to take part in a competition that this year received a record-breaking 5,000 applications globally.
The platform was founded by Yorkshire entrepreneur Paul Inman, who previously built and scaled Out of Home media business 75Media to over £18m in revenue. He now wants to use that experience to build a global platform born out of a passion to help solve real-world climate and nature challenges.
“I do not come from environmental science. I come from building businesses, working with technology and understanding how platforms, ideas and people connect. That is not something to hide. It is part of the point.” said Inman.
Planetary Minds takes a unique approach to one of the biggest bottlenecks in climate, nature and environmental decision-making – the cost and time it takes to produce the reports that underpin planning, conservation and sustainability decisions.
Instead of a single AI model producing a report, Planetary Minds assigns the problem to a panel of specialist AI agents, each representing a different area of expertise. The agents’ expertise could range from ecology and economics to engineering and policy, giving a well-rounded view as they assess the evidence and debate each other before a synthesised recommendation is produced. Every output is then reviewed by a human expert before it is signed off, with the full reasoning and debate visible live on the platform.
The platform has already been used to work through real-world problems including river pollution response, invasive seaweed management and bus fleet decarbonisation planning, and the company has held early conversations with leading climate institutions and businesses about how the approach could support future research and policy work.
For businesses, the platform positions itself around a prevention-first approach helping organisations stress-test environmental, nature and sustainability decisions at the planning stage, when a faster, more rigorously debated answer can help avoid costly mistakes further down the line.
“Being selected for ClimateLaunchpad is a good gut check. It doesn’t mean we’ve solved anything, it means a panel of people who work in this space every day looked at what we’re building and thought it was worth exploring further. We’re trying to build something that connects intelligence and effort that’s currently sitting in silos, and this is one more sign that idea holds up outside my own head,” added Inman.
Planetary Minds will now go through coaching ahead of the UK National Final in August, where it will compete for a place at the ClimateLaunchpad Global Grand Final, taking place in Singapore in October.
As part of that preparation and to continue developing the platform beyond the competition, the company is inviting NGOs, universities, consultancies and other environmental bodies to pilot the system directly by submitting real-world challenges, contributing specialist agents, or acting as expert reviewers as it moves toward practical, real-world testing.
