ImpactAlpha Open

ImpactAlpha Open: LA fires upend insurance markets + de-extinction tech

Dennis Price · January 21, 2025

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In this week’s Open:

  • CA’s insurance market pushed to the brink
  • The wild (and woolly) world of ‘de-extinction’ tech
  • Standing up for impact-first capital
  • Spotlight: Jigar Shah’s last stand

Let’s dig in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • LA wildfires stress California’s insurance market. “Everything’s changed now,” UC Berkeley’s Stephen Collier tells Louie Woodall. In ImpactAlpha, Woodall breaks down how the fallout from the LA fires could ripple through US insurance markets – and weigh heavily on lower-income households. The challenge, writes Woodall, “has opened space for bolder solutions to the insurance crisis to take root.” Read more.
    • Spotlight on fire-tech. The wildfires have spurred investor interest in so-called fire tech. San Francisco-based Gridware has announced $26.4 million in Series A financing, led by Seqoia Capital. The company hasmounted tens of thousands of AI-powered sensors on utility poles to quickly detect anomalies that could affect the grid’s performance and ignite wildfires. Convective Capital says it has a global pipeline of 600 wildfire tech startups and is raising a second fund. See more.
  • Impact private equity’s tough road ahead. Institutional investors and other limited partners are impatient to get their money back from private equity funds. And as limited partners get crankier about their current private equity investments, they have become less willing to write new checks to fund managers, writes ImpactAlpha’s Snehal Shah. While private equity professionals hope that 2025 will bring a surge of M&A and IPO activity, impact funds may still be caught in the downdraft. Keep reading.
  • A colossal approach to de-extinction tech. In just a few years, the first woolly mammoths to live in more than 4,000 years may be taking their first tentative steps across the chilly Arctic tundra. If they do, it will be a crowning moment for Colossal Biosciences, the bold-thinking “de-extinction” startup behind the mammoth and other projects intended to rewild long-lost species and restore degraded ecosystems, reports ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese. Learn how.
  • Reprioritizing impact-first strategies. How effective has impact investing actually been at creating meaningful, enduring change? “I have come to believe that what we’re currently doing is either not working, or it’s not enough,” Open Road Impact’s Caroline Bressan writes in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. Open Road is changing its for-profit status to embrace the promise of philanthropy. “We recognize that we can achieve far greater impact as a nonprofit and do more to further our mission of unsticking capital,” Bressan writes. Hear her out.
  • Outcomes-based education financing. Outcomes-based financing has a reputation as being a cumbersome way to engage private capital in what are typically publicly-funded social interventions. But in a number of cases, the innovative form of evidence-based financing has not only had immediate impacts on local communities but could spur durable systemic change. “Its true potential is in creating pathways to lasting improvements within complex systems with entrenched challenges,” Jenny Berg and Inês Charro of Education Finance Network write in a guest post on ImpactAlpha. Get learning.

Agents of Impact

  • Mercia Geises from Standard Bank Namibia is tapped to become CEO of Namibia Hydrogen Fund Managers, which is co-owned by Climate Fund Managers, the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia, and Invest International.
  • Narina Mnatsakanian, former head of impact investing at UBS Asset Management, joins Regeneration.VC as partner and chief impact officer. 
  • US SIF appoints Jennifer Coombs, previously with Ethos ESG, as head of content and development.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: The LA wildfires put a spotlight on wildfire prevention tech and California’s fragile insurance market; the potential of outcomes-based financing to drive systemic change in education; and Colossal Biosciences’ $200 million raise to revive the wooly mammoth, the dodo bird and other extinct species.

The Week’s Deal Spotlight

⚡ Jigar Shah’s $30 billion final clean tech push

In the last days of the Biden administration, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office finalized two high-profile clean tech loans. The LPO, helmed by climate tech veteran Jigar Shah, makes loans and guarantees for innovative climate tech companies looking to build their first plants in order to provide a “bridge to bankability” (listen to our 2022 podcast). Under the Inflation Reduction Act, LPO’s lending authority was boosted from $40 billion to $400 billion. President Trump has promised to claw back unspent funds from the Biden administration’s sweeping climate legislation. Among its top targets: LPO’s unspent billions and any loans and guarantees conditioned on technical, legal, environmental, and financial milestones (see, “Energy Department’s new climate narrative: Creating jobs, lowering prices and beating China”).

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Symbiotics is seeking an investment analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean in Mexico City.
  • Align Impact is hiring a director of catalytic capital in New York or Denver.
  • Candide Group is looking for a managing director of its Olamina Fund for a remote role in the Bay Area.

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