Re(Introducing) the Cisco Foundation Regenerative Future Fund: Redefining Impact in Climate Investing

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Re(Introducing) the Cisco Foundation Regenerative Future Fund: Redefining Impact in Climate Investing


In 2021, the Cisco Foundation 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 impression, whereas the opposite $50 million is devoted to fairness and debt investments in early-stage local weather startups (Seed to Series A) and enterprise funds.

As local weather challenges speed up and pure disasters intensify, the $50m local weather investments program has refined its strategy to impression investing by specializing in transformative, venture-backed applied sciences and options. Today, 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 Foundation’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.

Beyond offering capital, the Fund embodies the Cisco Foundation’s holistic strategy: catalyzing market-driven, regenerative options that actively defend and renew our planet. With portfolio improvement help 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 means of its portfolio of options.

Why the Regenerative Future Fund?

The Regenerative Future Fund is a part of our Cisco Foundation $100M Climate Impact and Regeneration dedication. It represents our perception within the energy of local weather impression investing to drive tangible, significant motion. Through the Fund we are going to proceed to put money into local weather tech corporations on the seed and collection A levels, whereas additionally serving as a restricted accomplice with early-stage enterprise funds advancing local weather options. This twin strategy allows us to help high-potential startups instantly, de-risk key early-stage markets, and foster ecosystems of innovation by means of enterprise fund partnerships.

Our imaginative and prescient is to assist construct methods the place humanity and nature thrive collectively. This rebranding alerts a sharpened deal with applied sciences and options that regenerate reasonably than deplete and that strengthen resilience, significantly for communities most impacted by local weather change. Our priorities embody:

  • 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 the direction of sustainability, akin to regenerative agriculture and the constructed surroundings.

Why Now?

The local weather tech funding panorama has skilled important fluctuations over the previous few years. After peaking in 2021 with a document $48 billion in world enterprise and development fairness funding, the sector noticed a 3rd successive 12 months of decline in 2024, dropping to $30 billion—a 14% lower from 2023 and a 37% drop from its 2021 peak (Sightline Climate). However, 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 resulting from rising rates of interest (KPMG). Carbon expertise investing has bucked the general development, 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 objectives, highlighting the rising significance of scalable carbon options.

Why Catalytic Impact Capital Is Still Needed: Catalytic capital like Cisco Foundation’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 objectives (Foley Hoag). With their sources, networks, and affect, company foundations like Cisco Foundation might help 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 be certain that transformative options are scaled to ship significant local weather impression.

Early-Stage Climate Investments Hold Strong: Within the local weather tech area, early-stage investments have proven exceptional sturdiness. In 2023, 69% of local weather tech offers have been directed towards early-stage corporations—a rise of 14 share factors from the prior 12 months (CB Insights). In addition, the general financing image for local weather tech start-ups is evolving. While 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 (Net Zero Insights).

Gaps in Funding for Adaptation, Biodiversity, Decarbonization, and Nature: Despite these advances, vital funding gaps stay. Adaptation finance represents simply 10% of world local weather finance (UNEP), whereas investments in nature-based options and biodiversity stay underfunded regardless of their essential function in combating local weather change. Additionally, local weather mitigation and decarbonization applied sciences nonetheless battle to draw the mandatory 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 development. Through catalytic enterprise capital, we intention to deal with the vital funding gaps in adaptation, mitigation, and nature-based options, supporting improvements that harmonize with pure methods. Together, 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 mild the trail to a extra sustainable and equitable future, together with:

  • Building Resilient Ecosystems. At the guts of catastrophe preparedness lies the power 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 gathering over 2 million hours of exact knowledge, Hohonu has laid a vital 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 methods to excessive climate occasions by means of investments like in Trailhead Capital.

  • Leading Decarbonization Across Land, Sea, and Cities. The Cisco Foundation is advancing transformative decarbonization with investments throughout ecosystems. In 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, CarbonConstructed is reworking the cement sector with its breakthrough low-carbon concrete expertise, not too long ago securing a serious deployment settlement with Meta. Just a few months in the past, we additionally backed Carbon Reform’s progressive answer for the constructed surroundings.
Two people in lab uniforms in a lab setting
Ebb Carbon engineers at work
  • Reimagining Carbon Markets for a Transparent Future. We additionally help platforms and options that may make decarbonization applied sciences successful. The frontier of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) is being reshaped by portfolio visionaries like Chloris Geospatial and Miraterra. Chloris’s partnership with Trove Research is bringing readability to over 550 forest carbon tasks, illuminating pathways to accountability. Meanwhile, 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 strong carbon markets.
  • Expanding Access with Inclusive Clean Energy. From African villages to bustling city facilities, our dynamic clear vitality portfolio is powering communities with hope and resilience. Jaza Energy, by means 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 Power Solutions is rewriting the playbook for decentralized renewable vitality for Africa and South Asia. In the spring of 2024, our funding in Aikido Technologies has propelled developments in floating offshore wind options. Their Aikido One platform achieved a groundbreaking milestone with its ultimate structural meeting accomplished in underneath 40 working hours—a tenfold improve in pace in comparison with conventional strategies—setting a brand new customary within the industrialization of floating platforms.
A wind power platform loaded on a barge
Aikido One platform loaded on a barge in Harvey, Louisiana (Credit: Business Wire)
  • De-Risking Early-Stage Climate Capital. Our local weather enterprise funds are on the forefront of driving systemic change. The Southeast Asia Clean Energy Facility (SEACEF) has established the primary blended finance fund for the vitality transition in Southeast Asia. The fund is electrifying Southeast Asia’s vitality panorama by supporting transformative early-stage tasks aimed toward accelerating the area’s transition to renewable vitality. 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 speedy and versatile capital to founders, whereas, Catalyst Fund and Katapult ship tailor-made, high quality enterprise help to ventures throughout Africa and Europe, respectively, to drive impression and tackle key wants past capital drive impression and tackle key wants past capital.
A group of people in black shirts inspecting a piece of tech equipment
Octavia Carbon, Portfolio Member of Catalyst Fund in Kenya

The Regenerative Future Fund is greater than an impression funding initiative—it’s a group of visionary founders, co-investors, and companions working collectively to construct bridges to a regenerative, resilient future.

Just as Cisco connects the world by means 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 internet of alternative and impression, making certain a future the place folks and planet are extra resilient collectively.

To join with us, be taught extra, or share a pitch deck, and please observe our on-line kind or attain out on LinkedIn.


About Cisco Foundation

Cisco Foundation 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 steerage, catalytic funding, expertise donations and help.

Discover extra about Cisco Foundation on its web site and observe us on X at @Cisco.

Cisco, Cisco Foundation and their logos are emblems or registered emblems of Cisco and/or its associates within the U.S. and different international locations. An inventory of Cisco’s emblems may be discovered at http://www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party emblems talked about are the property of their respective house owners. The use of the phrase ‘partner’ doesn’t indicate a partnership relationship between Cisco and every other firm.


Note: Featured picture at high, picture credit score: Terradot

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