Read time: 5 minutes
Hi, I’m Javi Gascón.
This is Climate Tech Distillery, a newsletter where I talk about one specific climate tech company every week.
Today we'll distill a company building laptops you can fix yourself, with a perfect 10/10 repairability score: Framework 🇺🇸
Want to sponsor Climate Tech Distillery? Here’s all the info.
What Problem Does Framework Tackle❓
They tackle the dirty secret of consumer electronics: most of a laptop's footprint happens before you ever turn it on, and then we throw it away after a few years.
1. Fastest-growing waste stream: The world generated a record 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022. Only about 22% of it was properly collected and recycled.
2. Built to be replaced: Glued batteries, soldered memory and proprietary screws turn a failing $20 part into a reason to buy a $1,500 laptop. The business model of most brands depends on that replacement cycle.
3. Carbon intensity: An independent life cycle analysis by Fraunhofer found that a Framework laptop emits about 200 kg of CO₂e over five years. Two-thirds of that comes from manufacturing, mostly the chips and the screen, so a new laptop is carbon-heavy even if it runs on solar.
4. Recycling doesn't close the loop: Shredding a laptop recovers some metals, but the chips, the screen and the energy that went into them are gone for good.
Product / Service 📦
Framework designs laptops and a compact desktop for people who want top performance without the disposability, sold directly online in more than 30 countries.
How it works: A laptop built like LEGO. A few screws and a magnetic keyboard give you access to every part, each labeled with a QR code that links to a repair guide. Battery, screen, keyboard, memory and storage swap out in minutes, with no glue and no tape.
Upgrade the brain, keep the body: When a new generation of chips comes out, you swap just the mainboard instead of buying a whole new laptop. Owners of the 2021 model can still upgrade to today's processors in the same chassis.
Choose your own ports: Four slots take small expansion cards (USB-C, HDMI, Ethernet, extra storage) that pop in and out like memory cards. The designs are open source, so the community builds its own.
Nothing goes to waste: An old mainboard can live on as a home server or mini PC, and spare parts are sold through Framework's own marketplace, open to third-party sellers.
Recycled materials: According to the company, the first laptop used 50% recycled aluminum and around 30% recycled plastic, shipped in fully recyclable packaging.
Market 🌐
Around 260 million PCs are sold every year, in a market worth more than $200 billion. Framework plays in the premium segment, competing head-to-head with Dell, Lenovo and Apple on specs.
Demand is driven by the EU's right-to-repair rules kicking in from 2026, similar laws in several US states, and a growing wave of Linux and local-AI users who want to own and tinker with their hardware.
Other Key Players
Fairphone 🇳🇱: The same modular, repairable philosophy applied to smartphones, with fairer sourcing of materials.
Back Market 🇫🇷: Marketplace for refurbished electronics that gives devices a second life after the first owner.
Faircado 🇩🇪: Browser extension that finds second-hand alternatives while you shop online. We covered them in issue #86.
Framework is the only company making high-performance laptops where every part, including the processor, is designed to be replaced by the user.
Founding Story 🦄
Framework was founded in January 2020 in San Francisco by Nirav Patel. He spent a decade at Apple and on the founding team of Oculus, where he led hardware. He grew uneasy watching devices get thinner, shinier and harder to fix, and set out to fix the consumer electronics industry.
Right after kicking off with manufacturers in Taipei, the team caught one of the last flights out before Taiwan closed its borders for COVID. They built the first laptop remotely and started shipping in July 2021, landing on TIME's Best Inventions list that year.
Since then they've raised around $44M. Today a team of about 60 people ships to 32 countries, and their new Laptop 13 Pro, launched in April 2026, sells more with Linux than with Windows. Fast Company named them one of the most innovative consumer electronics companies of 2026.
Top Impact Stats 📈
1. Swapping only the mainboard avoids around 80% of the manufacturing emissions of a brand-new laptop.
2. A perfect 10/10 repairability score from iFixit, the gold standard for teardowns.
3. Up to 90% recycled magnesium-aluminum in the Laptop 16's bottom cover, and 100% recycled packaging.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
Scale and optimize your business: Automation and AI implementation (Claude expertise) for companies so they can free up time to scale their revenues.
Give visibility to your climate company: Get your company in front of an audience of thousands of climate players and enthusiasts by sponsoring newsletter issues and LinkedIn posts.
Thanks for reading today’s issue! If you liked it feel free to hit the ❤️ button and share it with someone who might like it too. See you next Saturday:)