Prime Coalition, a nonprofit that steers and influences capital to support scalable solutions to climate change, and Azolla Ventures, a Cambridge, MA-based impact-first investing firm launched by Prime, have announced a $239m blended fund.
The new fund invests in companies that could significantly alter the trajectory of climate change, but are overlooked by traditional capital sources. Prime Coalition evaluates and governs impact and additionality for all potential investments and tracks and reports on accomplishment of impact, while Azolla Ventures assesses commercial potential and manages portfolio companies toward growth and maximal impact.
Investments made by the new Azolla Ventures fund must meet three investment criteria:
- Impact: Solutions must have the potential to reduce or remove at least 0.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions cumulatively by 2050;
- Additionality: Solutions must be unlikely to raise sufficient financial support from conventional investors at the time of Azolla’s initial investment; and
- Commercial potential: Solutions must have high potential for achieving commercial success at scale, ultimately enabling the envisioned impact. The fund’s investment should also position the solution to unlock additional capital as it matures.
Initial Azolla investments include:
- Heaten, developing high-temperature heat pumps for industrial processes;
- Funga, optimizing the forest microbiome for improved carbon storage;
- Sitration, developing membranes for low-cost battery recycling;
- Carbon Reform, deploying carbon capture systems in buildings for improved air quality and energy savings;
- Calcarea, decarbonizing shipping; and
- Scalvy, modularizing electric vehicle drivetrains for faster EV deployment.
Launched by Prime Coalition in 2021 by Matthew Nordan, and Amy Duffuor, Azolla Ventures is an early stage investor in climate breakthroughs that could avert catastrophic climate change. The firm manages the $239MM Azolla Fund I and the $50MM Prime Impact Fund.
Prime Coalition is a nonprofit organization that steers and influences capital to support scalable solutions to climate change. Since 2014, Prime has steered over $300MM in partnership with 250+ catalytic investors. Prime Coalition’s first impact-first pooled vehicle, Prime Impact Fund, is a 100% catalytic capital fund that made its 16th and final investment in 2021. Prime Coalition now has over 30 companies in its venture portfolio in total. To influence capital, Prime collaborates to build open source tools and convenes Project Frame to organize investors to improve forward-looking emissions impact methodologies and reporting best practices for climate-driven investments.
FinSMEs
13/07/2023