The Brief

The Brief: Elemental Impact’s catalytic capital for FOAK climate deployments

ImpactAlpha · April 20, 2026
Credit: EFTA, an AgDevCo portfolio company

Greetings Agents of Impact!

🌍Earth week. Join ImpactAlpha at two special events to match climate-focused fund managers with prospective limited partners, first at SF Climate Week in San Francisco today, and at DC Climate Week in Washington, DC, tomorrow. Bonus: We’ll be in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, April 22, for an Earth Day Happy Hour featuring Candide Group’s Morgan Simon and the Iya Lingua Quartet, a globally inspired ensemble blending American jazz, Latin Jazz, soul and bossa nova. Step up and step out! 

In today’s Brief:

  • Elemental Impact’s catalytic capital for FOAK climate deployments (podcast)
  • A Native-led lender for Native-led businesses
  • Remote tuberculosis detection
  • What AgDevCo’s credit rating means for agricultural lending

Pulling climate tech to commercial scale with the energy demand from data centers (podcast). It’s the worst of times and the best of times to be a climate tech investor. The market volatility and policy pullback of the past year has challenged many early-stage companies. But it’s go-time for growth-stage companies with solutions to energy, storage, grid and critical materials challenges. “This massive build out in AI infrastructure is creating huge demand for clean energy technologies and clean materials in ways that we haven’t seen before,” says Dawn Lippert of Elemental Impact on the latest Agents of Impact podcast. “That’s creating really strong market pull for many of the technologies we back.” Clean energy developers have faced long sales cycles, often waiting years to secure utility contracts. Now, demand from tech companies is helping commercialize promising approaches in record time. Elemental works closely with Microsoft, and has partnered with Amazon and Google, as well. “Tech companies can come in with different structures and faster purchasing, and that can be a massive accelerant to innovation we need,” Lippert says.

  • Cleantech dealflow. Honolulu-based Elemental helps philanthropic investors deploy catalytic capital to derisk climate solutions and set them on the road to commercialization (see, Lippert’s Agent of Impact profile from 2021). The nonprofit says the $107 million it has deployed has helped unlock nearly $12 billion in additional funding. An affiliated venture fund, Earthshot Ventures (profile on ImpactAlpha Edge), makes commercial investments in later-stage climate solutions. Elemental Impact this month backed two new companies and made follow-on investments in two more. BurnBot uses robots, controlled burns and advanced mapping to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. Pono Energy in Hawaii is cultivating camelina to be refined into sustainable aviation fuel. Elemental this week will host its annual showcase, Elemental Interactive, as part of San Francisco Climate Week.
  • First of a kind. Surging electricity demand represents opportunities for many of the cleantech solutions Elemental has identified, but only if they can reach commercial scale. Elemental has a particular interest in “first of a kind,” or FOAK, projects. Financing for FOAK projects has become scarce as investors increasingly focus on later-stage companies. Elemental deploys catalytic capital, alongside technical expertise, to get these early infrastructure projects built (see, “How D-SAFES can help climate tech startups get projects off the ground“). Take Nitricity, which produces low-carbon fertilizer using only air, water, renewable energy and agricultural waste such as almond shells. Elemental helped fund the company’s first commercial plant in California’s Central Valley. When Nitricity raised its Series B financing, it returned the initial investment to Elemental. Says Lippert, “We were able to recycle our capital in seven months and do the next first of a kind project.”
  • Keep reading and listen to, “Pulling climate tech to commercial scale with the energy demand from data centers (podcast),” by David Bank and Isaac Silk. Get the Agents of Impact podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Dealflow: Investing in Health

AI Diagnostics nabs $5.2 million to improve accuracy in tuberculosis detection. Tuberculosis incidence rates have dropped by 12% in the last decade. More than one in five people with the disease, however, are undiagnosed or unreported. South Africa-based AI Diagnostics developed Ostium, a digital stethoscope that analyses lung sounds to improve accuracy in tuberculosis detection, especially when patients lack stark symptoms like coughing. New Hampshire-based Steele Foundation for Hope invested $3.1 million to lead an 85 million rand ($5.2 million) investment round for the company. South African financial services provider iFSP Group, the Global Innovation Fund and South African investors Africa Health Ventures and Savant participated. The company developed its lung sound training database from patients across the Global South. Its tool is especially useful for nurses and community healthcare workers in areas with limited laboratory or radiology equipment.

  • AI for healthcare. AI Diagnostics joined the Chat for Health and AI Accelerator earlier this year, an initiative of Turn.io, OpenAI, Johnson & Johnson Foundation and Mulago Foundation. The cohort of 10 health tech companies also included Kenya-based Cliniva, which offers specialized consultation for women via Whatsapp. Mexico-based Cuéntame provides mental healthcare for workers with limited digital access. Uganda-based OneDay Health offers diagnostic guidance in remote areas. 

Turtle Island Community Capital refinances high-interest loan for Indigenous New York fashion hub. Rhode Island-based Turtle Island Community Capital has closed a $40,000 loan to Relative Arts, a brick-and-mortar shop and open studio in New York City’s East Village that showcases contemporary Indigenous fashion and design. The loan will pay off a high-interest line of credit Relative Arts took on to cover costs for last year’s first-ever Indigenous New York Fashion Week (see, “Indigenous designers take the spotlight at New York Fashion Week”). Vendors and artists at the event needed to be paid before event invoices came in, leaving the Relative Arts with no option but to use a short-turnaround lender. That lender, OnDeck, charged an effective interest rate of around 80%. TICC’s loan will cut monthly payments by more than 40% and replace revenue-based repayment with a fixed monthly structure. “Debt has been used against Indigenous communities so many times that it’s really hard to rebuild the type of trusting connection that allows people to imagine a world where debt can be supportive instead of extractive,” TICC’s Alexander Sterling told ImpactAlpha. Relative Arts generates around $150,000 in annual revenue and gives 70 Native artists a place to sell their work.

  • Indigenous finance. Native-owned businesses receive less than half a percent of philanthropic funding and even less in venture capital. In Rhode Island, 96% of Native-owned firms have no employees, “not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t get access to the type of capital or training that would allow them to scale,” Sterling said. TICC is one of a handful of Native-led CDFIs operating between Boston and Washington, DC. Its investor base includes the Colorado-based Oweesta Corporation, and a recoverable grant from the Hidden Leaf Foundation. Sterling, a member of the Ramapo Lenape Nation who previously spent nearly a decade in small business and solar lending, seeks to raise $40 million. “We want to be the lender of first resort for folks doing startup work that aren’t ready for VC funding,” Sterling said.

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Women-led Unconventional Ventures secured backing from Investinor, Wire Group and other investors to reach the second close of its second fund for overlooked founders. (Unconventional Ventures)
  • Alt Capital Partners, a Black-led investment firm in Johannesburg, rolled out its second Reimagine Social Impact Retail Fund to invest in retail properties providing access to daily essentials in rural and poor urban communities in South Africa. (Alt Capital Partners)
  • British International Investment invested 7.1 billion rupees ($76.2 million) in Jaipur-based Polaris Smart Metering to install smart meters in the state of West Bengal to track energy usage and improve grid efficiency. (Mercom India)

Signals: Pathways to Growth

Rating the risks for institutional investors in African agriculture. Slow and steady wins the… credit rating. London-based AgDevCo has for more than 15 years been meeting the financing needs of African farming cooperatives and agriculture businesses. By mixing concessional and non-concessional capital to make debt and equity investments, the London-based investment firm has built a portfolio and a track record to showcase the investability of a seemingly high-risk sector in a seemingly high-risk geography. An “A- issuer credit rating with a stable outlook” from S&P Global Ratings is a solid point of validation for AgDevCo’s thesis and work. “Getting to this point now where we have the same investment-grade rating as some pretty serious corporations is an important milestone,” AgDevCo’s Daniel Hulls and Chris Isaac tell ImpactAlpha. “Having the credit rating makes it a lot easier to approach a whole range of funders, from the fully philanthropic to the fully commercial.” The bond rating will enable AgDevCo to issue investment-grade bonds in the market and potentially raise capital from pension funds, insurers and other institutional investors. That, in turn, could drive more and lower-cost private capital to African agribusinesses. 

  • Capital mobilization. The firm, which invests out of a permanent capital vehicle, has until now largely been funded by the UK government and development finance institutions. “Every blended finance structure is bespoke, and they’re understandably difficult for investors to get their head around,” Isaac says. AgDevCo invests in some of Africa’s least-invested markets, including Malawi and Sierra Leone. “Often the perceived risk of investing in these markets is higher than the actual risk,” wrote Regina Vasarais of Convergence, the blended-finance network. That makes credit ratings especially important to drawing in institutional investors. A shortage of opportunities with investment-grade ratings – that is, BBB or higher – has inhibited emerging market blended finance funds and structures, like AgDevCo’s. “We’re trying to balance staying true to our DNA – agriculture, early stage, at the frontier, using blended finance in a smart way – while being as catalytic with private capital as we can be,” says Hulls.
  • Underserved markets. A small number of blended-finance fund managers in Africa have secured positive credit ratings while moving capital to underinvested markets and sectors on the continent. Emerging Africa and Asia Infrastructure Fund, part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group, or PIDG, secured an A2 issuer rating from Moody’s in 2022, for its investments in African infrastructure projects. Issuer credit ratings have similarly supported the flow of capital to underserved communities in the US. The Reinvestment Fund is one of a small number of community development financial institutions that have achieved an investment-grade rating; access to the public capital markets both lowers the CDFI’s cost of capital and expands its investor base.
  • Keep reading, “Rating the risks for institutional investors in African agriculture,” by Jessica Pothering.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Don’t miss these upcoming ImpactAlpha partner events:

Aruwa Capital Management’s Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, EQT Foundation’s Cilia Indahl, Power Sustainable’s Lili Buffett, and Fervo Energy’s Timothy Latimer are among the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Young Global Leaders… Mana Impact welcomes Josephine Price, formerly with Social Impact Partners and Insitor, as an investment committee member; Cindy Ko, formerly from Goldman Sachs, as head of catalytic investments and partnerships; Anindita “Nindy” Nur Annisa, formerly with World Resources Institute Indonesia, as investment analyst. 

Sorenson Impact is hosting an informational webinar about the Collaboration Fund on Friday, April 24 (see, “Collaboration Fund sparks a conversation around M&A in impact investing field-building“)… The 4th Bay Delta Bioregional Unconference for Regeneration is happening Saturday, May 9, in Oakland, Calif.  

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

Thank you for your impact!

– April 20, 2026