TGIF, Agents of Impact!
In today’s Brief:
- Roundup: Prepping for 0 day
- Podcasts: Conversations with Russell Sprole, Angela Achitei and Mara Bolis
- Spotlight: Real-time Earth monitoring via satellites
🗣 Zero day. Back in my tech reporting days, software makers lived in fear of “0 day” exploits by bad actors who discover security holes before anybody has time to patch them. In recent years, the global digital infrastructure has suffered through roughly 100 such zero-day attacks each year. This week, Anthropic disclosed that its new Claude Mythos model had quickly found multiple thousands of previously unknown “high severity vulnerabilities,” including in every major operating system and web browser. “Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely,” the company said.
The hyper-acceleration of events was also on display this week in the Persian Gulf, which in one day veered from unhinged threats to a whole civilization to a tenuous ceasefire. Reality will resolve open questions, like whether the Strait of Hormuz indeed reopens. In that way, truth is the ultimate bug fix, allowing multiple players to at least work from the same facts, if not the same intentions. As Linus’s law (courtesy of Eric Raymond) holds, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
In a relativistic world, Agents of Impact tend to be a truth-based bunch. The emphasis on measurable outcomes and the discipline of market forces serves to surface bad assumptions and poor execution, at least eventually. Aqua-Spark’s Amy Novogratz and Mike Velings reflected on “what we missed and why” in the accounting fraud scandal that took down the aquaculture unicorn eFishery last year. In the service of real-world climate progress, The Russell Family Foundation’s Kathleen Simpson took ownership of the fact that emissions in the philanthropy’s portfolio may go up before they go down. Ceniarth’s Diane Isenberg and Greg Neichen dispelled convenient fantasies of free lunches and win-wins to beat the drum for impact-first investing.
Sometimes the facts line up agreeably. Roodgally Senatus reported that for retiring business owners considering selling to a private equity firm or exiting to their own employees, net proceeds can be higher in worker buyouts. Sometimes, facts are awkward, as when environmentalists’ opposition to, say, a clean clean energy project may do more harm than good, as Builders Vision’s Lukas Walton argued in a guest post. And sometimes the logic takes a while to play out. In local lending for green infrastructure, green bankers have “mostly come up short,” in filling the gap left by the freeze in federal funding, Amy Cortese wrote. Zero day is upon us. Anthropic this week paused the release of its new model to give the software industry a chance to regroup. With a slight pause in the onslaught of other threats, let’s fix the bugs in our own broader fabric of truth and trust. – David Bank
🟢 ImpactAlpha Edge goes live. This week we launched ImpactAlpha Edge, bringing you structured data and market intelligence to help you move faster, invest smarter and multiply your impact. A warm welcome to new Edge subscribers Lightrock, CrossBoundary Group, Decarceration Fund and Clarion Call Capital. “ImpactAlpha Edge is our response to the demand from Agents of Impact for actionable intelligence that speeds the pace of decision-making,” ImpactAlpha’s Dennis Price wrote in a letter to subscribers. “It’s connective tissue for the people building and enabling a more inclusive, sustainable and regenerative economy.”
- Keen to learn more? Request a demo.
Next Week’s Call
☎️ How emerging impact managers turn community capital into functioning funds. You’ve got an investment thesis, a deal pipeline and some aligned investors. How do you get an impact fund off the ground? Join fund managers and operating partners who have successfully bridged that gap to discuss what it takes to move from an investment thesis to a fully functioning fund. Hear from Broadstreet’s Mariel Kennedy and Steve Petsos, along with Groundbreak Coalition’s Eric White and Fibers Fund’s Sarah Kelley, on the next Agents of Impact Call, Wednesday, April 15, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP today.
The Week’s Podcasts
🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Could the Iran war spur the growth of local, sustainable alternatives in energy, fertilizer and cookstoves? Plus, introducing ImpactAlpha Edge, and a public reckoning with an aquaculture investment gone bad.
- Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
🦸 Agents of Impact: Virta Ventures adapts its asset-light thesis for AI and climate policy challenges. The next generation of climate tech startups won’t look like the “asset-light” software startups that held favor until recently. And they will not be financed like them either, explains Virta Ventures‘ Russell Sprole on the latest Agents of Impact Podcast. The San Francisco-based manager is targeting climate solutions with both digital and physical components.
👩🏫 Women Changing Finance: Building social enterprises in eastern Europe. ADV Romania Group’s Angela Achitei joins host Krisztina Tora to share her stories of building social enterprises in Romania and throughout Eastern Europe. Over the past 15 years, Achitei has founded businesses designed to create opportunities for people from vulnerable backgrounds. Difficulty accessing capital spurred her to co-create a community-owned financial institution to fund what traditional lenders wouldn’t.
📯 Criterion Institute Podcast: The intersection of gender lens investing and AI. Harvard’s Mara Bolis joins host Joy Anderson to discuss her work at the Kennedy School, and her reflections on addressing gender inequality in emerging technologies. Bolis argues for an interdisciplinary approach to conversations around new technologies that empower underrepresented voices.
The Week’s Spotlight
AI squeezes more value out of real-time earth monitoring via satellites. The astronauts aboard Artemis II aren’t the only ones with a bird’s eye view of Earth. More than a thousand observation satellites are circling the planet. Combined with AI, which can process their imagery in minutes, they make up a real-time monitoring layer for Earth systems that can track extreme weather and other phenomena at unprecedented scale and speed. Satellites are also tracking deforestation, methane emissions and other climate indicators. As asset managers, insurers and carbon markets integrate satellite data, impact investors are taking notice. “Launch costs are coming down fast. The number of satellites is exploding. The use cases are exploding,” Hans-Christian Lauer of California-based impact investing firm Zenani Capital told ImpactAlpha. “From a climate investor perspective, Earth observation is exactly where we should be.”
- Pricing risk. Zenani this week invested in Buenos Aires-based Satellites on Fire, which uses AI and existing satellite data to detect wildfires up to 35 minutes earlier than NASA. Such data can give communities crucial time to prepare and save lives. Insurance giant Aon is using the platform to assess wildfire risk in its Latin American forestry portfolio and develop parametric wildfire insurance products. Natural disasters caused $368 billion in economic losses worldwide in 2024. Insurers are turning to satellite data to underwrite and price that risk. Munich Re embedded flood intelligence from ICEYE into its underwriting platform. The Finnish satellite company captures images of the same location multiple times daily. New York-based Floodbase’s satellites detect water levels through cloud cover to produce real-time flood maps that trigger automatic payouts. Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, Liberty Mutual and AXA Climate are partners.
- Asset light. Satellites on Fire doesn’t own a single satellite. The company builds its detection system on top of publicly available satellite data from NASA, Google and other research organizations. That approach allows it to focus on software and analytics, avoiding the cost and complexity of launching and maintaining hardware. California nonprofit Carbon Mapper has also gone asset-lite, using satellite imagery from Planet Labs to detect and map methane and CO2 emissions from industrial sources. In March, California signed a $95 million contract with Carbon Mapper to use the data for real-time emissions enforcement. “You could easily make a case for investing in a startup that just shoots up a better purpose-built satellite,” Lauer said. “That’s just not where I think the world is going.”
- Keep reading and catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.
The Week’s Talent and Jobs
💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here.
Ravi Bhatt was promoted to managing director and head of responsible investment at Apis Partners… Temasek’s deep tech venture arm Xora appointed Katie Fehrenbacher as partner… Lena Alfi exited Malala Fund. Nabila Aguele, Malala Fund’s former Nigeria lead, was promoted to CEO… Jason Hopps stepped down as editor for Africa and the Middle East at the International Finance Corp.
Greysteel brought on Drew McWilliams, previously with Ariel Property Advisors, as director of national affordable housing… Patrick J. McGovern Foundation welcomed Eric Stinehart, formerly at Hopelab, as a strategy analyst… NESsT promoted Mariana Paulino Lima to associate director of the Lirio Fund Brazil.
That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend.
– April 10, 2026
