The San Francisco-based investment firm is tackling the hardest-to-abate sectors in the economy with a fund for tech founders rethinking how goods are made, moved, powered and measured.
Pachamama focuses on technologies supporting the decarbonization of materials and industrial processes, energy systems and infrastructure and freight technology. It also invests in climate data and decision infrastructure.
The firm closed its $5 million debut fund with an anchor investment from Environment Next, a climate-focused foundation, and 53 other investors, including a family office and individual operators with expertise in the firm’s target sectors.
Procurement link
The types of solutions Pachamama champions can be capital intensive to build. “The companies that will define the next century are not being built in software-only sandboxes – they are being built in labs, factories and logistics networks,” Pachamama’s Karen Sheffield said in a statement (see, “For private equity players at SuperReturn, asset-light is out, HALO is in”).
The firm’s approach to ensuring its portfolio startups get traction is to “give them something most venture funds cannot: direct access to the Fortune 500 buyers, procurement officers, and commercial relationships that determine whether a climate technology actually scales,” she added.
Before founding Pachamama, Sheffield worked for Visa, PepsiCo and American Airlines, where she worked in corporate venture and innovation. “I turned that expertise into access that I can provide now to startup founders,” Sheffield told ImpactAlpha.
Portfolio look
Pachamana has made eight investments and plans to invest in up to 30 companies. Its portfolio includes ElectricFish Energy, which builds battery-integrated EV chargers that enable ultra-fast charging without costly grid upgrades; Mars Materials, which uses captured carbon to produce chemicals for water purification and clean transportation; and Matereal, which is developing an AI-enabled materials platform designed to replace toxic plastics at scale without requiring changes to existing manufacturing processes.
