Greetings Agents of Impact!
In today’s Brief:
- Reconstructing Iran on a different design
- JPMorgan’s small business loans
- European wave power
- Shareholders pushback on data centers amid SEC chill
Featured: Systemic Investing
The relational imperative and the reconstruction of Iran. A deal between the US and Iran may, or may not, be imminent. Either way, it’s not too early to design a different Iran – a country of 93 million that has been constrained by decades of repression and sanctions. “Whether Iran’s structural break arrives in five months or five years, what comes next will be one of the most consequential reconstruction efforts of the 21st century,” Todd Khozein of SecondMuse writes on ImpactAlpha. Khozein and SecondMuse have indeed designed regenerative economies and entrepreneurial ecosystems with partners in the US and around the world. Khozein, who left his native Iran as a child in 1979, says that more than a dozen family members were shot or imprisoned during the country’s January protests; one is facing execution for shutting his business in solidarity with the protestors. Khozein is applying his abilities to think systemically – from value-creation to financing to increasing returns – to his homeland, and presents the case in a detailed white paper. “The question I find myself returning to,” he says, “is what systemic investing would look like at the scale of a country, applied to the rebuilding of Iran’s economy after nearly half a century of tyranny.”
- Primed for change. Iran is a knowledge economy with civilizational depth, a diaspora already mobilized, and a now-obvious strategic position at the hinge of Asia, the Gulf, and the Mediterranean. With its young, educated population and degraded 20th-century infrastructure that lets it start anew, Iran is primed for rebuilding with 21st century systems. The Persian-language market of more than 110 million speakers worldwide; Iranian expertise applied to existential resource pressures provide natural opportunities. “A workforce rebuilt from scratch can be built AI-native from day one. Energy systems can be decentralized, renewable, and citizen-owned by design,” says Khozein. Financial systems can be architected for economic transformation. The diaspora that could fund and staff this transformation is already organized, he says. On Feb. 14, 2026, more than one million Iranians rallied worldwide in coordinated action. “This is distributed capital, mentorship, and global network access waiting for vehicles designed to route value back to the communities doing the work.”
- Trust-building. Trust is not a soft variable, it is hard economics, Khozein argues. SecondMuse is built on the premise that trust lowers transaction costs in networks of human relationships, and creates institutions that allow markets to innovate and absorb shocks. “We call it the Relational Imperative,” he says. The “relational architecture” for such resilience includes women’s economic agency, minority legal inclusion, contracts, open information, local networks and global diaspora investments. “Each is individually measurable. Each has been deliberately destroyed. Each can be deliberately rebuilt,” Khozein says. “The future of the Iranian economy is not buried beneath its soil. It is held in the minds, the hands, and the relationships of its people. And it is held in the seriousness with which Iranians, supported by international partners, design the architecture through which capital reaches the ground.”
- Keep reading, “The relational imperative and the reconstruction of Iran,” by Todd Khozein.
Dealflow: Community Finance
JPMorgan allots $39 million to small business owners and local job creation. JPMorgan is partnering with mission-driven lenders to invest in entrepreneurs starting businesses and creating jobs in their communities. The bank is deploying $39 million in grants and debt to more than two dozen lenders with a goal of creating or retaining 6,000 jobs, as part of its American Dream Initiative. “Small business owners don’t just need capital, they need the right capital at the right time, delivered through trusted pathways that meet them where they are,” said JPMorgan’s Shaolee Sen. “By working alongside local organizations, we’re helping entrepreneurs overcome barriers, build lasting businesses, and contribute to vibrant local economies.” Among its investees: Craft3, an Oregon-based community development financial institution, which received a $10 million loan to support 50 businesses in the state. JPMorgan also invested $10 million in Avante Capital Partners’ fourth small business investment company fund. The women-led private credit firm closed the $400 million fund last week, securing backing from other banks, pension funds, endowments, foundations, family offices, and individual investors.
- Catalytic grants. Access Ventures secured $2.3 million and Impact Charitable secured $1 million in grants from JPMorgan to provide support for emerging fund managers. TruFund Financial Services received $2.3 million to strengthen operational infrastructure and deploy capital to businesses in Atlanta, New York and New Jersey. Appalachian Community Capital’s $2 million grant will go towards its Powering Resilient Opportunities Fund, which aims to mobilize up to $200 million for more than two dozen community lenders for small businesses in the Appalachian region. Other recipients include VilCap, which is raising a pilot fund to provide flexible growth capital to community-focused entrepreneurs; and Capital Impact Partners, which is launching two cohort programs for real estate developers.
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CorPower Ocean closes €53 million to commercialize ocean wave energy. Ocean waves represent an underdeveloped source of renewable energy. Sweden-based CorPower Ocean is building ocean-based power projects that deploy buoys in the ocean, and convert their movement to electricity. The company closed a €53 million ($61.7 million) Series B round after a top up from the European Innovation Council’s EIC Fund and €3 million from London-based Algebris Investments. “Wave energy has long been an under-leveraged piece of the clean energy puzzle,” Algebris’ Stefano Ferrari said. Other investors in the round include Acario; the corporate venture capital arm of Tokyo Gas; and GTT Strategic Ventures, the venture arm of French gas company GTT Group.
- Energy transition. It took a significant amount of grant support to help CorPower prove its technology and reach this phase of growth. It set up its pre-commercial, 10-megawatt wave energy farm off the coast of northern Portugal with a €40 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund last year. It also received a €17.5 million grant from the EIC Accelerator and a €19 million grant through Horizon Europe to set up wave farms in the UK. Prior investors include Finland-based NordicNinja VC, SEB Bank’s climate tech investment group, and InnoEnergy. Separately, Oregon-based Panthalassa, another ocean wave energy company, raised $140 million in Series B financing led by Peter Thiel to develop wave farms that power AI data centers.
- More.
Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:
- LeapFrog Investments invested in Pharmacity, a retail pharmacy chain with more than 1,100 stores in Vietnam. (Leapfrog Investments)
- The New Mexico State Investment Council reupped in UP Partners’ Abundance Fund to back deep tech startups expanding into New Mexico. (UP Partners)
- Canada’s development finance institution FinDev Canada committed $15 million to Exagon Impact Capital’s Latin America Fund, which invests in renewable energy projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. (FinDev Canada)
- Focused Energy raised $240 million in a Series A round led by RWE, Prime Movers Lab and EIC Fund to move forward on a laser fusion power plant at a former nuclear site in Germany. (Focused Energy)
Signals: Fiduciary Future
The SEC is dismantling the free markets. It’s on us to rebuild it. Investors have an obligation to fill the void in corporate governance as the Securities and Exchange Commission retreats, As You Sow’s Andrew Behar declares in his latest Fiduciary Future column. Since the Trump administration took office, the SEC has abandoned its climate disclosure rules, given up on company requests to exclude proposals and barred investors from sharing theirs on its EDGAR database. Chair Paul Atkins has publicly questioned the legal basis for non-binding shareholder proposals altogether and the agency is planning to rewrite rules for corporate disclosure. “It is the methodical dismantling of the mechanisms that enable shareholders to play their critical role in corporate governance,” Behar writes. On As You Sow’s public exchange, investors can share their proxy memos as a stand-in for EDGAR. The group has also filed suit, alongside the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, against the SEC for violating the Administrative Procedure Act. “Publish your proxy memos. Defend the proposal process. Support independent research. Build shared infrastructure,” Behar urges. “The SEC has created a void across every dimension of shareholder participation. Filling it is what fiduciary duty demands when the institutions we rely on are intentionally dismantled.” Read his full piece.
- Data center pushback. For now, shareholders retain their right to put forward proposals. Among the most closely watched this year relate to AI. Big Tech firms racing to build data centers are overlooking their climate pledges and opting for whatever energy sources they can get their hands on. Often that means locking in fossil fuel capacity. At Meta, for example, emissions from electricity use surged by nearly 150% between 2019 and 2024. “In the AI race, tech giants risk undermining their climate commitments at precisely the moment disciplined long-term decision-making matters most,” said Andrea Ranger of Trillium Asset Management. Trillium, along with As You Sow, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and Mercy Investments are behind a spate of shareholder proposals asking tech giants to square their surging power emissions with their climate commitments. Some 18% of Amazon shareholders supported one such proposal. Shareholders voted on a similar resolution at Meta’s annual general meeting yesterday (results were not yet available) and Alphabet shareholders face a vote on the issue on June 5.
- Water risk. “Data center companies have been slow to provide a complete view of their water use, leaving investors without the information they need to fully understand financial risks below AI’s surface,” writes Kirsten James of nonprofit advocacy group Ceres. On Friday, shareholders of Digital Realty Trust, a global builder and operator of data centers, will vote on a proposal that asks the company to publish annual, region-level metrics on its exposure to water-related risks. James points to global data center operator CyrusOne and tech giant Alphabet as examples of companies doing comprehensive water reporting. Read her whole post.
Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
California’s governor appoints Martin Muoto, a developer of more than two dozen ground-up affordable housing projects, to the board of the California Housing Finance Agency… Swedfund welcomes Christer Simrén, a growth investor with board experience across technology and finance, as a director.
BCIU Ventures is looking for a fellow in New York to support the communications and research operations of its investment-focused unit… Candide Group seeks a principal for its Afterglow Climate Justice Fund in Oakland… Temasek is hiring a senior associate for its emerging technologies team in San Francisco or Singapore… Patria is on the hunt for an associate for its infrastructure and project finance practice… Advantage Capital Management is recruiting a renewable energy analyst in New York.
👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.
Thank you for your impact!
– May 28, 2026
