FLOCEAN: Alexander Fuglesang on leveraging Oil & Gas heritage for Water Tech and the "Flat Round" strategy

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FLOCEAN: Alexander Fuglesang shares how to get funded in 2026

Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 

In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.

Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.

Episode 69: FLOCEAN: Alexander Fuglesang on leveraging Oil & Gas heritage for Water Tech and the "Flat Round" strategy 

In this episode, I sit down with Alexander Fuglesang, Founder and CEO of FLOCEAN, a Norwegian company moving freshwater production to the subsea. Alexander shares the grueling 18-month journey of closing a Series A that involved a mix of philanthropists, sovereign climate funds (Nysnø), specialized VCs (Burnt Island Ventures), and a major strategic (Xylem). We discuss the harsh reality that the water industry is just as conservative as oil & gas, forcing FLOCEAN to pivot from selling massive projects to building a "First of a Kind" (FOAK) unit on their own balance sheet. Alexander also breaks down the specific Project Finance/SPV structure they use to fund high-CapEx infrastructure and how they identified their beachhead market of 94 countries based on depth, scarcity, and geopolitical stability.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how Alexander’s existing investors saved the round by offering a flat valuation term sheet to trigger outside interest.

Key Facts FLOCEAN:

• Goal: To decentralize freshwater production by moving reverse osmosis subsea, reducing energy use by 30-50%, and eliminating land use.
• Milestone: Closed a multi-stage Series A with Xylem and Nysnø while securing their first municipal client in Norway.

Alex’s Top Findings:

1. The "Flat Round" Bridge to Strategics. When the Series A dragged into a second closing, and the market cooled, FLOCEAN’s existing investors (Three Bird Partners and Burnt Island) didn't force a down round. Instead, they offered a term sheet at the same valuation to signal confidence. This lack of predatory terms gave Alexander the leverage to shop the deal and eventually land Xylem as a major strategic investor. "Our two lead investors... said we're going to write you a term sheet for the same valuation and we're supporting. If you can take that out there and you can shop around... we will encourage that... that went into triggering the interest of Xylem... and then the round got seriously oversubscribed."
2. Being ‘Climate Tech’ Can Actually Hurt You. FLOCEAN struggled by being lumped into capital-heavy climate categories like batteries and hydrogen. Their challenge was reframing from “green infrastructure” to “commercial water producer with climate upside.” " It was quite challenging because the physical stuff is capital-intensive, and we were quite early lumped into sort of the climate tech space. We're a water producer with the next generation sort of technology, but we're lumped together with green infrastructure, batteries, and EVs. "
3. The Pivot: Building "First of a Kind" (FOAK) on Spec. Despite a strong track record in subsea oil & gas, FLOCEAN realized that no client wants to be first, and no infrastructure investor wants to fund the pilot. The pivot was accepting that they had to finance the first commercial-scale unit themselves to prove the technology before unlocking project finance. "We were quite convinced that we could... go straight for a big, profitable commercial pro