A London headquartered investment firm has announced the close of its latest $1Bn fund to find tech-based solutions for a more sustainable future.
Generation Investment Management, a firm with $22Bn in assets and co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, will invest between $50 million and $150 million into companies which meet its three one of its three criteria.
The ‘Generation IM Sustainable Solutions Fund III’ fund will focus on tech solutions to planetary health, including lowered carbon solutions, and new solutions to mobility, food, energy, and enterprise.
It will also focus on new solutions to people’s health, and financial inclusion.
The first two investments in the fund are American firms SOPHiA GENETICS, a company democratising data driven medicine, and Andela, the engineering-as-a-service business enabling fast growing global enterprises to access Africa’s top software engineering talent.
The firm also singled out Asana, DocuSign, gogoro, CiBO, M-Kopa, Ocado, Optoro and Seventh Generation as companies which are ‘representative of Growth Equity opportunities’.
The common thread among these companies is a commitment to providing customers with superior products and services, and a dedication to promoting fully sustainable business models.
“We believe that we are at the early stages of a technology-led sustainability revolution, which has the scale of the industrial revolution, and the pace of the digital revolution,” Gore said in a statement.
Lilly Wollman, Partner of the Growth Equity platform added: “Globally, we see the rapid adoption of sustainable solutions at an important inflection point.
“By taking advantage of technology cost-down curves, companies can drive sustainable transition through profitable growth and innovative business models.”
Lila Preston, Partner and Co-Head of the Growth Equity platform said: “Sustainability is about both what a company does (the products and services it sells) and how a company operates,”
“A hallmark of our investment approach is that we take a systems-level view and leverage our long-term horizon and deep industry insights.”