Photo Credit: Markus Spiske / Unsplash
When in Rome…
Do as the Romans do, right?
We’ve heard this slogan many times before and have used it in many ways to find better options than one's researched by ourselves. So, we thought it appropriate to highlight top climate change investors and show you what they might be looking into.
Recently, The Information tech newsletter (available by subscription) listed the five most important climate tech investors to watch. Naturally taking the cue from “when in Rome,” we did a deep dive on the five and found out the following.
First, over half of the investments made by this group focused on transforming automative petroleum-based vehicles to electric. This didn’t just include the vehicles themselves, but charging stations, batteries and means to recycle products used in the vehicles.
Looks like this is the area to watch for who and what become number one and number two. This is likely where most of the large increases in value will happen.
Now let’s get into a breakdown of the five professionals and companies mentioned in the article.
Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures
The name might sound familiar to some as this is Bill Gates’ multi-billion dollar fund he started many years ago. One of his success stories was investing in ESS at a valuation of $65 million in 2019, which went public last year and now has a market cap of $2 billion.
They only look for big killer apps, ones equivalent or bigger than all the carbon released by the state of California in one year.
Ben Kortlang, G2 Venture Partners
Kortlang is one of the old times investing in solutions to climate change having left Goldman Sachs in 2008 to dedicate all his time to this. An example of one of his success stories is the investment in Luminar, an autonomous vehicles company whose lidar technology is used in electric cars in a $100 million funding round, which valued it at $900 million. The company went public through a SPAC merger in December and now has a market capitalization of nearly $7 billion.
G2 is a bit more focused on companies that already have proven products and are scaleable today. Right now it is focused on an approach for capturing carbon and removing it from the atmosphere.
Victoria Beasley, Prelude Ventures
Prelude seems to have a broader approach than the other funds mentioned here and looks for all kinds of ways to keep our planet sustainable, including retail and software companies.
Joshua Posamentier, Congruent Ventures
Although Posamentier’s fund is bit smaller than the others, The Information newsletter picked him because of the huge success he had at Prelude investing in QuantumScape, a battery startup that now is valued at over $14 billion.
Amy Francetic, Buoyant Ventures
Finally, for those of you who want to really dive into the early stage investing of a couple million dollars, which have commercial traction today but aren’t on the top of everybody’s list in the financial world. Francetic is in the process of raising money for her third fund, Buoyant Ventures.
Looks like lots of options are there for the next climate change unicorns valued at over a billion dollars, and these five investors have a great chance of telling us who that might be.
Best,
Craig