Impact Investing

The Brief: Agents of Impact claim their agency in the age of AI

ImpactAlpha · April 14, 2026

Greetings Agents of Impact!

☎️Still time to RSVP: How emerging impact managers turn community capital into functioning funds. Back-office structure is destiny. This week’s Agents of Impact Call explores the choices early-stage managers make about fund administration and operations, which can be decisive in realizing their desired impact. Sarah Kelley built Fibers Fund to shift financial decision-making power to communities closest to the impact of the textile industry. At Groundbreak Coalition, Eric White is helping redesign wealth-building in the Twin Cities through homeownership, entrepreneurship and land development. Both managers have tapped Broadstreet Impact Services to ease some of their pain points. Kelley and White join Broadstreet’s Mariel Kennedy and Steve Petsos in conversation with ImpactAlpha’s David Bank to explore what it takes to move from an investment thesis to a fully functioning fund.

  • Answer the call on Wednesday, April 15, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London.

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In today’s Brief:

  • Agents of Impact claim their agency in the age of AI
  • A career GPS to navigate economic disruptions
  • Driving home ownership through Opportunity Zones

Impact investors seek to assert human agency over the future of AI. No rule or regulator required Anthropic to pause the release of its new Mythos model. The San Francisco-based AI company voluntarily limited its distribution after finding that Mythos is able to identify thousands of previously unknown flaws in major operating systems and browsers – and exploit them within hours to gain full control of corporate networks. As AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio has famously observed, there’s more regulation of a sandwich in New York City than there is of the emergent power of artificial intelligence. Mike Kubzansky, who recently stepped down as head of Omidyar Network, urged impact investors to lean in, to invest up and down the AI technology “stack,” and to step up to the multiplying policy debates that will shape the future of technology and society. “There’s a professional industry that wants you to think it’s too complicated and leave it to them,” Kubzansky told attendees of the Global Impact Investing Network’s West Coast Impact Forum last week. “I’m here to say that’s bullshit, and you should not be flummoxed by it.”

  • Next act. Kubzansky said his next act is the creation of an investor network – and an affiliated fund – to help impact investors engage both with the builders of AI technology and the policymakers that can shape it. He will discuss investor agency in the age of AI with Roy Swan of the Ford Foundation, Daryn Dodson of Illumen Capital, and Bulbul Gupta of Pacific Community Ventures, moderated by ImpactAlpha’s Dennis Price, at Mission Investors Exchange National Conference in Atlanta later this month. “This is not a conventional impact story in the way we’re all used to thinking about it,” Kubzansky said at the GIIN forum. “But it’s equally important, in terms of driving a trustworthy stack that every citizen can feel confident using, that is looking out for their interests and not being extractive of them.”
  • Financial guardrails. The AI policy discussion heated up last week as well with OpenAI’s release of a white paper, “Industrial policy for the Intelligence Age.” The 13-page document articulated planks that some AI experts have proposed, including mechanisms to share the gains from AI-driven growth more widely for “shared prosperity.” OpenAI called for giving workers a voice in the AI transition, including formal collaboration with management to improve job quality, enhance safety and respect labor rights. It even suggested modernizing the tax base with higher taxes on capital gains, corporate income and taxes on automated labor. In practice, OpenAI has opposed regulations that could have advanced such policy changes. A separate paper from the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator at Vanderbilt University calls for financial guardrails in advance of what the center’s Asad Ramzanali argues is a coming crash, sparked by overbuilding of AI data centers.
  • LP/GP. There are plenty of startups but few dedicated investment vehicles focused on “good AI.” The nonprofit Mozilla Foundation three years ago launched Mozilla Ventures to invest in startups developing safe and inclusive AI. Juniper Ventures is responding to demands to make AI secure and beneficial for humanity. Omidyar Network, along with Ford Foundation and Nathan Cumings Foundation, two years ago took a $5 million stake in Anthropic, which has since appreciated about 30-fold. Ford Foundation is also a limited partner in Ex/ante, a VC firm investing in technology that increases control over privacy, data, assets and algorithms. Zoe Weinberg incubated Ex/ante at Schmidt Futures and raised $40 million from Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon of venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, fund of funds Cendana Capital and others. “We know what the authoritarian surveillance-state model of technology looks like. China and Russia have done a very good job perfecting that,” Weinberg tells ImpactAlpha. “We are interested in supporting the opposite.”

Dealflow: Good Jobs

Achieve Partners backs FutureFit AI to help young workers navigate the AI economy. The fast-growing AI economy is displacing young, entry-level workers. Impact investors see an opportunity to use the same technology to help young professionals identify transferable skills, build new ones, and connect to in-demand roles in healthcare, manufacturing and the digital economy. “We want to harness AI to solve problems for people,” said Ryan Craig of Achieve Partners, which  invests in workforce development and education tech to drive economic mobility (view Achieve’s profile on ImpactAlpha Edge). The New York-based firm backed FutureFit AI, which is partnering with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and workforce development organizations to build a “Career GPS” that help workers navigate career transitions. It uses labor market data and assesses workers’ skills, experience and goals to recommend personalized career paths. “We believe the labor market is already uneven, particularly for young workers, and is going to become, perhaps, upended,” Craig told ImpactAlpha. “Everyone is going to need a career GPS.”

  • High-demand jobs. Through a partnership with the state of Connecticut, FutureFit says it has supported nearly 50,000 workers. About 7,000 of those workers received training for high-demand jobs. FutureFit says it has an 85% job placement rate. “The same technology that is causing so much anxiety around job losses and layoffs also has tremendous potential to help unlock economic mobility for people and close critical talent gaps for industries of the future,” said FutureFit’s Hamoon Ekhtiari. Achieve made the investment through its $167 million edtech fund focused on young learners and workers.
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Flora Fertility snagged $5 million from ManchesterStory, Slauson & Co., TruStage Ventures and BDC Capital to expand access to fertility insurance for women. (Flora Fertility)
  • Toronto-based Common Wealth secured $12 million to help small businesses in Canada build retirement savings plans for their employees. (Common Wealth)
  • Boston-based Sora Fuel clinched $14.6 million in a round co-led by Spero Ventures and Inspired Capital to make sustainable aviation fuel using carbon captured from water, renewable energy generation and ambient air. (Sora Fuel)

Impact Voices: Policy Corner

Impact investments in Opportunity Zones could drive home ownership – with a few policy tweaks. A consequential executive order from President Donald Trump could be a game changer for impact investors working in affordable housing and home ownership – in a good way. Last month, the President directed the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to evaluate how to align Opportunity Zone incentives with single-family home construction. In a guest post, Jonathan Tower of Opportunity Zone-focused fund manager Arctaris Impact Investors, explains how the executive order, coupled with broader housing legislation making its way through Congress, opens a window for addressing affordable home ownership in the US. “The issue of affordable homeownership, as opposed to rentals, is one of the thorniest challenges facing impact investors and funders concerned about the vital issue of access to housing,” Tower writes. Trump’s executive order “could make it possible to funnel some of the $100 billion in private capital mobilized for Opportunity Zones into much needed single family-home development.”

  • Design flaw. Most teachers, nurses and police officers in the US cannot afford to buy starter homes. Why has virtually none of the capital raised for Opportunity Zone investments been used to build such homes for ownership? “It was a regulatory miscalibration,” Tower writes. The law was designed to incentivize long-term investing – 10 years at least. “Those rules made rental towers and commercial projects financially viable but made for-sale home construction nearly impossible,” Tower explains. “The perverse result is that in the very communities the program was designed to empower, tax incentives have been manufacturing a permanent renter class.”
  • Course correction. Tower proposes four regulatory reforms that would better align OZ incentives for starter-home development, developed from conversations with lawmakers and staff on both sides of the aisle. “They are not partisan proposals,” he says. “They are technical improvements.” One, enacted this month by the IRS, “eliminates the rural income penalty” on housing affordability eligibility. Another would enable capital recycling into qualified projects within 365 days, tax-free. “This capital-velocity mechanism turns a stationary vault into a factory for homeownership,” Tower says. Third: Lower the cost of development equity through tax benefits. Finally: Mandate a stewardship covenant. “Require a five-year prohibition on renting as a condition of Opportunity Zone eligibility for for-sale homes,” Tower argues. “This ensures the homes we build create genuine owners.”
  • Keep reading, “Impact investments in Opportunity Zones could drive home ownership – with a few policy tweaks,” by Jonathan Tower of Arctaris Impact Investors. Visit ImpactAlpha’s Policy Corner, supported by the US Impact Investing Alliance. 

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Miranda Bogen becomes chief technologist and head of the AI Governance Lab at the Center for Democracy and Technology… Rocket Community Fund taps Megan Kusulas, previously with Henry Ford Health, as public relations associate… Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati appoints Chris Dawson, previously with Indianapolis’ federal home loan bank, as senior vice president and chief information officer. 

Stephanie Cineus, former grants associate at the Commonwealth Fund, joins Surdna Foundation as a grants management associate… Environmental Defense Fund is hiring an institutional partnerships coordinator in New York… Also in New York, Neuberger Berman is on the hunt for an impact investing equity research analyst… The Conservation Fund is looking for a services specialist for its Georgia Farms Fund in Atlanta.

Gates Foundation has an opening for a global policy and advocacy president in Seattle… The University of Chicago’s Edwardson Social Entrepreneurship Program seeks an assistant director… Carbon Equity seeks a senior investor relations manager in Amsterdam… Royal London Asset Management is recruiting a responsible investment analyst in the UK.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– April 14, 2026