ImpactAlpha LP/GP: Middle East pipeline of green capital slows to a trickle

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Welcome to this week’s ImpactAlpha LP/GP, where we take you inside the real business of impact investing and the dynamic relationships between owners, managers and intermediaries of impact capital.

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In this week’s newsletter:

• Green capital caught in the Middle East crossfire
• Live on Edge: 18 LPs based in the Middle East
• Scaling European impact tech
• Abundance Circle’s catalytic fund of funds

Featured: Situational Awareness

Middle East sovereign wealth financed massive green infrastructure investments. Now what? Fund managers had been beating a path to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh to tap into the oil-rich region’s enormous pools of sovereign wealth. Now many investors and bankers are among those fleeing the escalating attacks from Iran on physical, economic and financial infrastructure. Also at risk: the capital pipeline funneling the region’s oil wealth to AI data centers, energy transition funds and emerging managers around the globe. Anyone waiting on a check from the region should prepare to wait. “They’re pencils down,” Rob Day of sustainable infrastructure investor Spring Lane Capital tells ImpactAlpha. Reuters this week reported that three major sovereign wealth funds in the region are rethinking their investment commitments and pledges as they look to offset the financial costs of damaged infrastructure and disrupted revenues. “Those looking to raise capital in the region should probably allow for some slow responses for a while,” Paul O’Brien, former deputy chief investment officer for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, says. “But deal flow should resume soon after the Strait of Hormuz opens.”

• Green gold. The conflict is not likely to put a dent in the $5 trillion of wealth held by sovereign funds in the region. The Gulf region has recycled its oil wealth to become a critical source of funds for global decarbonization initiatives. The United Arab Emirates, which hosted COP28 in Dubai in 2023, used the summit to stand up a $30 billion climate fund, among the largest such funds in the world. The fund, Altérra, invested $6.5 billion to anchor climate funds from Brookfield Asset Management, TPG Rise Climate and BlackRock. Last March, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund ADQ forged a joint venture with Energy Capital Partners to invest up to $25 billion in clean energy infrastructure in the US. The Qatar Investment Authority this month teamed up with BlackRock, EQT and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System in a take-private deal for global sustainable energy company AES. Saudi pension fund Hassana in 2024 committed $1.5 billion to TPG’s second Rise Climate fund and Transition Infrastructure Fund. “Large and sophisticated investors like Hassana are essential to meeting the growing capital demands of the new climate economy,” TPG’s Jim Coulter said at the time.
  
• Slowdown. The main vehicle for Saudi Arabia’s ambitions has been the $1 trillion Saudi Public Investment Fund, or PIF.  It staked $1.5 billion to US-based EV startup Lucid Motors in 2024. On a visit to the White House last November, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged to invest $1 trillion in the US. However, PIF was said even then to be low on liquidity in the wake of expensive bets, such as the Kingdom’s futuristic city Noem. “It would be prudent for those big funds to slow down their deal funding for a month or two to see how things play out,” says O’Brien. Impact capital seekers also face competition from the Gulf’s shifting interests to themes such as AI and local economic development, he says. “This could limit their scope to embrace impact investments.”
  
• Keep reading, “Middle East sovereign wealth financed massive green infrastructure investments. Now what?” by Amy Cortese. 

🟢 Live on Edge: LPs in the Middle East

LPs from the Middle East deploying capital to impact funds. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is just one of at least 18 limited partners from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and other hubs in the Gulf region of the Middle East that are investing in impact funds around the world. Also profiled on ImpactAlpha Edge: Dubai Future District Fund, which backed the third fund from Singapore-based Leo Capital. Mubadala Investment Company, the state-owned investment vehicle of Abu Dhabi, invested in Miami-based Bicycle Capital. Saudi Arabia pension fund Hassana Investment Company is an LP in TPG’s second Rise Climate Fund.

• View a collection of Middle East-based LPs on ImpactAlpha Edge.

Dealflow: Impact Tech

Partech raises €300 million to scale European impact technologies. Vulnerabilities in the movement, security and cost of goods are on full display amid climate change and global conflicts. Partech launched its Partech Impact Fund to write equity checks of between €15 million and €40 million in European companies improving the resilience of global value chains for infrastructure, construction, agriculture, mobility and healthcare. For the 40-year-old private equity firm’s first impact fund, Partech raised capital from institutional investors in Europe, the US, Asia and Australia, including German insurer Allianz, French public investment bank Bpifrance, British Business Bank, the European Investment Fund, Belgian lender KBC, Neuberger Berman, QIC and Visa Foundation. In “one of the most challenging fundraising environments of the past decade,” Partech wrote in a statement, the fund’s final close marked “one of the largest debut impact franchise launches in Europe in recent years.”

• More than money. Initial deals include French electric mobility platform Gireve, Swiss-Italian sustainable agriculture app xFarm, and UK-based FYLD, which offers AI-powered services for the infrastructure sector. Partech says such startups face “a structural gap” in Europe. “Impact-native companies reaching commercial maturity need investors who bring more than capital,” said Partech’s Arnaud Minvielle. “They need strategic, operational and scaling capabilities typically found in private equity. Our fund was built precisely for this transition phase.”
  
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Speedinvest lands anchor capital for inclusive tech fund for Africa. Vienna-based Speedinvest backs early-stage startups in Europe, the Middle East and Africa that provide access to basic goods, health and financial services, as well as climate and AI-based solutions. Its first Africa-specific fund secured a €40 million ($46 million) anchor investment from the European Investment Bank. Speedinvest is looking to raise €200 million to invest in the digitization of key services and identify technologies that could be suitable for Europe. A third of the fund’s capital will be invested in women-led or women-focused businesses. “In a world of fragmentation, we are building bridges,” said EIB’s Karl Nehammer of its commitment to the fund.

• Africa expansion. Speedinvest launched in 2011 with a €10 million fund for European startups. It closed its fourth Europe-focused fund at €350 million in 2024, along with €250 million in follow-on investment capital. The firm, acknowledging a challenging environment for exits for early-stage VC firms, secured €60 million last year for two continuation vehicles (see, “Restive LPs look to secondaries and creative exits to recoup capital“). Its Africa-focused fund builds on its portfolio of nine investments on the continent, which includes Nigeria-based vehicle financing company Moove. Anda in Angola provides electric vehicles under a “drive to own” model. Also: Kenya-based logistics company Leta, Ghana-based business management and embedded financing startup Oze, and digital payments company Julaya from Côte d’Ivoire.
  
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

• San Francisco-based Bridge Housing secured $92 for its first impact fund, which is seeking $350 million of equity to build, acquire and preserve affordable and workforce housing in high-cost markets. KeyBank, BMO, Capital One, US Bank, Century Housing and PGIM backed the fund. (Bridge Housing)
  
• Positive Ventures received a “catalytic” grant from 2X Global’s Resilient Future Fund for a pilot recycling project that focuses on female waste pickers in Latin America. (Positive Ventures)
  
• Milestone: Jesse Draper’s women-focused venture fund, Halogen Ventures, has invested in more than 100 female-founded startups, including Everlywell, Metropolis and four other unicorns that are collectively valued at over $15 billion. (Halogen Ventures)

Signals: Catalytic Capital

Anchored by Peter Buffett’s NoVo Foundation, Abundance Circle builds a catalytic fund of funds. When Luis Javier Castro, co-founder of Bogotá-based Mesoamerica, and Brian Gallagher, former head of United Way, left those roles to work together, they set out to rethink the structure and role of an impact investment fund entirely. “Instead of jumping ahead and raising a traditional fund, we said: why don’t we design from scratch?” Castro tells ImpactAlpha. The design brief: integrate collective impact, conscious capitalism and systems thinking. The result is an evergreen, global fund of funds structured as a donor-advised fund and administered by ImpactAssets. The vehicle uses philanthropic capital to take first-loss positions in a portfolio of “consciously capitalist funds” organized around thematic clusters. The goal is to prove that solving large planetary problems can generate market-rate returns, and use that proof to draw institutional investors in at scale.

• Activating the ecosystem. The NoVo Foundation, the foundation co-chaired by Peter Buffett, is anchoring Abundance Circle. Alongside last month’s Latin American Impact Investing Forum in Mérida, Buffett huddled with Salim Ismail of Singularity University, former Unilever CEO Paul Polman, and others in the first of Abundance Circle’s so-called “collisions” with outside thinkers. The team is seeking to raise $100 million in philanthropic catalytic capital in its first year, with ambitions to scale to $1 billion within five years.
  
• Global strategy. The firm’s investment strategy focuses on deep tech in climate, food, health, and agriculture; the energy transition and circular economy; and community-based economic development. Within each theme, Abundance Circle plans to back three to four funds in different geographies, then actively connect them, Castro says. “If within a cluster you can bring together a North American fund, a Canadian fund, one in Latin America, and others in Africa, Asia or Europe, and frame it as a global strategy, I think that will catch the attention of large investors.”
  
• Keep reading, “Anchored by Peter Buffett’s NoVo Foundation, Abundance Circle builds a catalytic fund of funds,” by Erik Stein.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Charlie Edwards, previously with Alteri Investors, becomes partner and co-head of the Bridges Fund Management Inclusive Growth Fund… Flourish Ventures promotes Efayomi Carr to investment partner… Impact Capital Managers taps Adam Habib Cisse, former fellow at Google, as programs and operations analyst… Bluefront Equity welcomes Jonas Stensrud Finholdt, previously with Deloitte, as investment controller.

Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future appoints Theresa Finney Dumais, previously with Freddie Mac, as president and CEO…  Lolitta Nunn, previously with Potlikker Capital, joins Impact Charitable as director of the Unlock Ownership Fund… CVS Health Ventures is looking for a strategy and operations associate in New York… Second Horizon Capital has an opening for an investment vice president in Iowa.

Chicago Trend seeks a vice president of advisory services in Chicago… Arnold Ventures is looking for a people and partnerships director in Houston… Community Vision seeks a loan officer in San Francisco… Cambridge Associates is hiring a sustainable and impact investing analyst in London… Aruwa Capital Management is on the hunt for a principal in Nigeria… Aqua-Spark is recruiting a development officer focused on Africa

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

Thank you for your impact!

– March 18, 2026