In 2021, the Cisco Basis made a daring dedication to deal with the local weather disaster, pledging $100 million over 10 years to fund progressive local weather options. This dedication is strategically divided: $50 million helps nonprofit grants that empower organizations driving local weather and social affect, whereas the opposite $50 million is devoted to fairness and debt investments in early-stage local weather startups (Seed to Sequence A) and enterprise funds.
As local weather challenges speed up and pure disasters intensify, the $50m local weather investments program has refined its method to affect investing by specializing in transformative, venture-backed applied sciences and options. As we speak, we’re proud to announce the evolution and rebranding of our local weather investments program because the Regenerative Future Fund.
This new identify displays our deep dedication to leveraging the Basis’s endowment to drive scalable, high-impact options. By investing in startups and enterprise funds that ship measurable, transformative outcomes, the Regenerative Future Fund focuses on regenerating ecosystems, strengthening group resilience, and advancing sustainable economies.
Past offering capital, the Fund embodies the Cisco Basis’s holistic method: catalyzing market-driven, regenerative options that actively defend and renew our planet. With portfolio improvement assist and a imaginative and prescient to speed up the subsequent wave of local weather innovation, the Regenerative Future Fund is devoted to making a extra sustainable, thriving future by way of its portfolio of options.
Why the Regenerative Future Fund?
The Regenerative Future Fund is a part of our Cisco Basis $100M Local weather Impression and Regeneration dedication. It represents our perception within the energy of local weather affect investing to drive tangible, significant motion. By the Fund we are going to proceed to put money into local weather tech corporations on the seed and sequence A levels, whereas additionally serving as a restricted accomplice with early-stage enterprise funds advancing local weather options. This twin method allows us to assist high-potential startups immediately, de-risk key early-stage markets, and foster ecosystems of innovation by way of enterprise fund partnerships.
Our imaginative and prescient is to assist construct programs the place humanity and nature thrive collectively. This rebranding alerts a sharpened concentrate on applied sciences and options that regenerate relatively than deplete and that strengthen resilience, notably for communities most impacted by local weather change. Our priorities embrace:
- Restoring and regenerating: Supporting improvements that replenish biodiversity, restore and construct resilient ecosystems, and advance round, regenerative economies.
- Prioritizing co-benefits, local weather fairness and inclusion: Championing options that promote resilience and fairness in communities going through local weather dangers.
- Catalyzing lasting change: Investing in breakthrough concepts that reshape industries in direction of sustainability, corresponding to regenerative agriculture and the constructed setting.
Why Now?
The local weather tech funding panorama has skilled important fluctuations over the previous few years. After peaking in 2021 with a report $48 billion in world enterprise and progress fairness funding, the sector noticed a 3rd successive yr of decline in 2024, dropping to $30 billion—a 14% lower from 2023 and a 37% drop from its 2021 peak (Sightline Local weather). Nonetheless, the local weather tech sector has demonstrated resilience in comparison with the enterprise capital market, the place funding volumes have plummeted by 52% since 2021, largely as a result of rising rates of interest (KPMG). Carbon expertise investing has bucked the general pattern, experiencing a 24% improve in enterprise capital investments in 2023, totaling $17.7 billion (Pitchbook). This surge has been pushed by regulatory demand and company decarbonization targets, highlighting the rising significance of scalable carbon options.
Why Catalytic Impression Capital Is Nonetheless Wanted: Catalytic capital like Cisco Basis’s Regenerative Future Fund is required now greater than ever to supply the funding required for first-of-a-kind and scaling improvements important to assembly world local weather targets (Foley Hoag). With their sources, networks, and affect, company foundations like Cisco Basis can assist elevate pioneering applied sciences and place them to be adopted and scaled by bigger gamers within the tech ecosystems. By stepping in the place the market falls quick, catalytic funding can make sure that transformative options are scaled to ship significant local weather affect.
Early-Stage Local weather Investments Maintain Robust: Throughout the local weather tech area, early-stage investments have proven outstanding sturdiness. In 2023, 69% of local weather tech offers had been directed towards early-stage corporations—a rise of 14 share factors from the prior yr (CB Insights). As well as, the general financing image for local weather tech start-ups is evolving. Whereas fairness investments have declined, new types of non-dilutive capital are stepping in. Debt financing for local weather tech soared from $13.9 billion in 2021 to $45.6 billion in 2024, as corporations transition from enterprise capital to financial institution loans and different funding sources (Internet Zero Insights).
Gaps in Funding for Adaptation, Biodiversity, Decarbonization, and Nature: Regardless of these advances, important funding gaps stay. Adaptation finance represents simply 10% of worldwide local weather finance (UNEP), whereas investments in nature-based options and biodiversity stay underfunded regardless of their essential function in combating local weather change. Moreover, local weather mitigation and decarbonization applied sciences nonetheless battle to draw the required capital to scale options.
For all these causes, by refocusing because the Regenerative Future Fund, we reaffirm our dedication to options that regenerate ecosystems and drive resilient, sustainable progress. By catalytic enterprise capital, we intention to deal with the important funding gaps in adaptation, mitigation, and nature-based options, supporting improvements that harmonize with pure programs. Collectively, we’re working to create a future the place companies, ecosystems, and communities can thrive hand in hand.
Celebrating Our Portfolio’s Progress
Since 2021, the Regenerative Future Fund has been a catalyst for transformative change, weaving a tapestry of innovation in greater than 25 corporations and funds. As we cross the midway mark in deploying our dedicated capital, the tales of our portfolio gentle the trail to a extra sustainable and equitable future, together with:
- Constructing Resilient Ecosystems. On the coronary heart of catastrophe preparedness lies the flexibility to anticipate and adapt. Our portfolio firm Hohonu is main the cost in defending communities from the rising threats of flooding and sea-level rise. With its groundbreaking real-time water monitoring expertise, Hohonu equips municipalities, insurance coverage, researchers, and underserved communities with the instruments to remain forward of climate-driven disasters. By accumulating over 2 million hours of exact information, Hohonu has laid a important basis for safeguarding livelihoods and resilient ecosystems. The fund additionally goals to bolster options in regenerative agriculture to implement the local weather resilience of our soil, farmlands, and farmer programs to excessive climate occasions by way of investments like in Trailhead Capital.
- Main Decarbonization Throughout Land, Sea, and Cities. The Cisco Basis is advancing transformative decarbonization with investments throughout ecosystems. Within the ocean and coastal sector, Ebb Carbon is pioneering Electrochemical Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement to take away as much as 350,000 tons of CO₂ over the subsequent decade in partnership with Microsoft. This builds on our preliminary dedication to marine and coastal applied sciences, beginning in 2022 with our funding in Vesta. On land, Terradot is scaling Enhanced Rock Weathering in tropical climates, supported by $58.2 million in new funding and partnerships with Google, Frontier, and Microsoft. In trade, CarbonBuilt is reworking the cement sector with its breakthrough low-carbon concrete expertise, not too long ago securing a serious deployment settlement with Meta. A couple of months in the past, we additionally backed Carbon Reform’s progressive answer for the constructed setting.
- Reimagining Carbon Markets for a Clear Future. We additionally assist platforms and options that can make decarbonization applied sciences a hit. The frontier of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) is being reshaped by portfolio visionaries like Chloris Geospatial and Miraterra. Chloris’s partnership with Trove Analysis is bringing readability to over 550 forest carbon tasks, illuminating pathways to accountability. In the meantime, Miraterra is revolutionizing soil carbon monitoring. By combining AI and sensor expertise, Miraterra empowers landowners to precisely measure, observe, and improve soil carbon shares, bridging the hole between extra sustainable agriculture and sturdy carbon markets.
- Increasing Entry with Inclusive Clear Power. From African villages to bustling city facilities, our dynamic clear power portfolio is powering communities with hope and resilience. Jaza Power, by way of its acquisition, has not simply marked a profitable exit however amplified its mission of solar-powered empowerment. And the merger of SteamaCo and Shyft Energy Options is rewriting the playbook for decentralized renewable power for Africa and South Asia. Within the spring of 2024, our funding in Aikido Applied sciences has propelled developments in floating offshore wind options. Their Aikido One platform achieved a groundbreaking milestone with its ultimate structural meeting accomplished in below 40 working hours—a tenfold improve in velocity in comparison with conventional strategies—setting a brand new commonplace within the industrialization of floating platforms.
- De-Risking Early-Stage Local weather Capital. Our local weather enterprise funds are on the forefront of driving systemic change. The Southeast Asia Clear Power Facility (SEACEF) has established the primary blended finance fund for the power transition in Southeast Asia. The fund is electrifying Southeast Asia’s power panorama by supporting transformative early-stage tasks aimed toward accelerating the area’s transition to renewable power. Third Sphere is empowering startups to push the boundaries of enterprise investing in local weather with groundbreaking {hardware} options. By constructing the world’s main enterprise fund for biodiversity, Superorganism is setting a brand new group for nature applied sciences globally. Enduring Planet is redefining local weather financing by offering fast and versatile capital to founders, whereas, Catalyst Fund and Katapult ship tailor-made, high quality enterprise assist to ventures throughout Africa and Europe, respectively, to drive affect and handle key wants past capital drive affect and handle key wants past capital.
The Regenerative Future Fund is greater than an affect funding initiative—it’s a group of visionary founders, co-investors, and companions working collectively to construct bridges to a regenerative, resilient future.
Simply as Cisco connects the world by way of transformative expertise, we’re connecting companies, ecosystems, and communities to create a regenerative world the place innovation and resilience thrive hand in hand.
With each enterprise funding and accomplice fund, we’re weaving an online of alternative and affect, making certain a future the place individuals and planet are extra resilient collectively.
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About Cisco Basis
Cisco Basis envisions a world of equitable, resilient and empowered communities the place everybody can attain their full potential and thrive. Its mission is to accomplice with organizations to create and scale progressive digital options that promote a wholesome planet and advance the wellbeing and self-reliance of underserved communities globally. Since 1997, it has harnessed the breadth of choices from Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide expertise chief serving to revolutionize the best way organizations join and defend within the AI period, for strategic steering, catalytic funding, expertise donations and assist.
Uncover extra about Cisco Basis on its web site and observe us on X at @Cisco.
Cisco, Cisco Basis and their logos are emblems or registered emblems of Cisco and/or its associates within the U.S. and different nations. An inventory of Cisco’s emblems might be discovered at http://www.cisco.com/go/emblems. Third-party emblems talked about are the property of their respective house owners. Using the phrase ‘accomplice’ doesn’t suggest a partnership relationship between Cisco and some other firm.
Be aware: Featured picture at prime, picture credit score: Terradot
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