Salesforce has launched a $50 million impact fund. The San Francisco cloud-computing company intends to use the fund to back social startups that use its products.
Already, the Salesforce Impact Fund has made its first round of investments: Hustle, a peer-to-peer messaging services for nonprofits (Salesforce took part in a recent $8 million funding round); Angaza, a software provider for clean-energy startups (Salesforce invested as part of its $10.5 million Series B round); Ellevest, a digital financial advisor geared towards women started last year by Sallie Krawcheck (Salesforce was part of a recent $34 million funding round); and Viridis, a career service that uses machine learning and predictive analytics.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been a champion of business as a force for good. The impact fund will be managed by Salesforce Ventures, the company’s venture arm, which since 2009 has invested more than 250 tech startups in 14 countries.
Omidyar Network issued a statement saying it “[looks] forward to continuing to provide support to and co-invest with [Salesforce’s] team.”
