Greetings Agents of Impact!
In today’s Brief:
- Responsible AI in the Age of Trump
- Optimizing energy use in Southeast Asia
- Impact seafood buy-out fund
- An allocator’s guide to impact investing in healthcare
Featured: Trustworthy Tech
Responsible AI in the Age of Trump (podcast). Once Elon Musk is done dismantling government agencies, he’s likely to turn his attention back to artificial intelligence. The world’s richest man has long warned of the technology’s risks (“far more dangerous than nukes”). Musk is in a running feud with Sam Altman of OpenAI – which Musk helped launch a decade ago – including over how “open” the underlying source code of the AI models should be. Further complicating that debate is last month’s arrival of DeepSeek from a Chinese research lab, which can outperform America’s best efforts more cheaply and with less power with its free, open-source, large-language model. In the latest Agents of Impact podcast, TechBetter’s Ravit Dotan, an AI governance advisor and researcher, helps investors sort out the issues. Among the takeaways:
- Executive orders. Tech titans like Marc Andreessen have been pushing for lighter regulation of AI. In the first week after his return to office, US President Donald Trump overturned an executive order from his predecessor that required tech firms to share tests of their AI models before unleashing them publicly, including ensuring models are not racially biased. It also called for standards to identify deep fakes. (A similar policy just went into effect in Europe). Trump’s own order called for AI systems “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas.” Dotan notes that Trump, in his first term, emphasized that AI needed to be trustworthy and safe. “It doesn’t seem like everything is just out the door,” she says. “He may have a different version of AI ethics, responsible AI, trustworthy AI, but it’s still there.”
- Open source. Dotan has “huge concerns” about technology as powerful as AI, which is already being used for everything from generating pornography to building weapons. “There is much less oversight, if at all, when using those open-source models,” she says. But source code that is not available for inspection puts “huge power in the hands of the only ones who can use it. How can we understand how it works? How can we build guardrails if you don’t really have access to the heart of it?”
- Investor role. Last year, impact investors sought a seat at the AI table with a small investment in Anthropic from Omidyar Network, Ford Foundation and Nathan Cummings Foundation. Dotan said investors can help portfolio companies implement AI that advances their missions. “Make sure that our technology is actually effective and doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Does not have hallucinations. Does not miss out on some of our target audience because it’s discriminatory,” Dotan says. “I would encourage investors to help their portfolio companies figure out how to do that.” At the same time, she urges investors to learn from the rollout of investment approaches such as ESG. “We’ve seen that there are ways to promote agendas of this kind that can create backlash, and that’s what we don’t want.”
- Keep reading, and listen to the podcast, “Responsible AI in the Age of Trump.” Subscribe to ImpactAlpha podcasts wherever you listen, and catch up on all of the shows on the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network.
Dealflow: Financing Fish
Builders Vision backs Bluefront Equity’s buyout fund for sustainable seafood. Bluefront Equity is looking to accelerate the sustainable development of global aquaculture, as consumer demand for seafood and rising temperatures endanger wild fisheries. “The world is increasingly recognizing that food shortages, pre- and post-harvest losses, unsustainable land-water-energy use, food waste and climate change are threatening the global food supply chain,” said Bluefront’s Simen Landmark. The Oslo-based firm is seeking up to $150 million for its second buyout fund for Norwegian companies across the seafood value chain. Builders Vision, Lukas Walton’s family office, invested in Bluefront via Builders Bridge, which provides non-tax advantaged, flexible and patient capital for investment opportunities in oceans, energy and food and agriculture.
- Blue economy. Portfolio companies in Bluefront’s second fund include Cryogenetics, which conserves genes of endangered fish species for reproduction, and Horizon Software (formerly Fiizk Digital), which makes software for aquaculture management. The fund is looking for majority stakes in up to 10 companies. Bluefront says it has already surpassed the roughly $62 million it raised for its first fund, with commitments from returning Norwegian investors including Havfonn, Steensland Group, TD Veen, Klaveness Marine and 3S Invest. “Shifting the value chains of major industries with practical, scalable solutions – like those in Bluefront’s portfolio – is essential for building a sustainable blue economy,” said Builders Vision’s James Lindsay. Builders is also an investor in the Global Fund for Coral Reefs and Ocean 14 Capital. It also extended a $70 million credit-risk guarantee for the Bahamas’ recent debt-for-nature swap deal.
- Check it out.
Singapore’s Clime Capital backs Ampotech’s energy management software. Clime Capital, a Singapore-based fund manager that backs low-carbon tech companies, has invested in energy management startup Ampotech. The investment came via its second Southeast Asia Clean Energy Fund. Ampotech, a spin-off from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research, helps building owners, manufacturers and utilities optimize their energy use. The funding follows Ampotech’s $1.7 million pre-series A round in 2023, led by Vietnamese climate tech firm Earth Venture Capital.
- Clean energy fund. SEACEF II, like its predecessor fund, provides risk capital to early stage clean energy companies in Southeast Asia. The blended-finance fund scored $127 million in a first close last year anchored by Allied Climate Partners, Australian Development Investments, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet and Impact Assets, which provided first-loss capital. British International Investment, the International Finance Corp., FMO, Cisco Foundation and others came in as senior equity investors. Amptech’s new funding round will support expansion into Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
- Share this post.
Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:
- Volvo agreed to fully acquire Novo Energy, a battery cell company that was set up as a joint venture with the bankrupt Swedish battery maker Northvolt. (Electrive)
- Madrid-based Mundi Ventures secured $5 million from IDB Invest for its Latin America fund, which invests in companies driving financial inclusion, protection and resilience in the region. (Mundi Ventures)
- Telos Impact in Brussels closed its climate fund of funds at €64 million ($66.7 million). (Telos Impact)
Impact Voices: LP / GP
An allocator’s guide to reigning in private equity’s worst excesses in healthcare. Private equity investors are on the receiving end of long-simmering frustrations with the US healthcare system. PE firms in recent years have scooped up healthcare providers, often leading to bankruptcies and poor patient outcomes. These practices have drawn bipartisan condemnation by state and federal policymakers. Apollo Global Management and Leonard Green and Partners, for example, received a scathing rebuke from the US Senate Budget Committee, which charged the firms with prioritizing “profits over patients” in hospital chains they acquired (see, “Patient outcomes, value-creation and headline risk in health care private equity”). Yet the healthcare sector represents a meaningful source of alpha and, potentially, impact. What’s a responsible investor to do? Ibrahim Rashid interviewed asset owners, advocates, researchers and field builders about how to spot such problematic investments. “My aspiration is for the allocator community to develop standards for investing in healthcare that are comparable to those emerging for climate change and workforce management,” Rashid writes in a guest post. Among his due diligence guidelines:
- Excessive debt. Lenders underwrite debt on the credit quality of both private equity sponsors and the operating company itself. But only the operating company is responsible for paying it off. Has a healthcare chain or other operating asset taken on excessive leverage at the private equity buyer’s behest? When the debt load is more than seven times earnings, investors beware.
- Staffing levels. To pay off excessive debt, many healthcare facilities reduce their workforce. There are no federal regulations mandating patient-to-nurse ratios. California and Massachusetts have fixed requirements per department; other states mandate staffing committees of providers and executives. Have teams become more lean after an acquisition? Have doctors been replaced by physician assistants or advanced practice registered nurses? Such moves may expand access to healthcare amid a national shortage of doctors; asset allocators should determine the circumstances under which the changes were implemented.
- Lessons learned. Over 20% of healthcare bankruptcies in 2023 were at PE-backed entities. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project has mapped these bankruptcies to the relevant fund managers. Ask any PE fund manager on this list what happened, why and what steps they’re taking to course-correct. Ask others what they are doing differently. “If LPs are willing to tighten the screws and use their power by asking better questions, pushing back on predatory policies, and refusing to invest in those unwilling to change,” Rashid writes, “we may be able to reign in some of the worst excesses of plundering in the US healthcare system.”
- Keep reading, “An allocators guide to reigning in private equity’s worst excesses in healthcare,” by Ibrahim Rashid on ImpactAlpha.
Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
Former DOE Loan Programs Office chief Jigar Shah will team up with his former Energy Gang, Katherine Hamilton and Stephen Lacey, on Open Circuit, a weekly podcast about “the next phase of the energy transition.” The first episode drops Feb 14.
Ghana Venture Capital and Private Associate appoints Amma Gyampo, previously with Criterion Institute, as CEO. She succeeds Hannah Acquah… Engine No. 1 adds Brian Boland, previously with BridgNight, as managing director and head of investments… Raven Indigenous Capital Partners welcomes Carissa Sanchez, previously a consultant with Boston Consulting Group, as an investment associate… Tensie Whelan announces that she will step down as director of the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business at the end of this year… Asha Rao, previously with LISC, joins Roc USA Capital as deputy director.
Greentown Labs appoints Georgina Campbell Flatter, formerly with climate tech nonprofit Tomorrow Now, as CEO… Stefany Gutu, formerly an ESG research associate at MSCI, joins JP Morgan as vice president of its Center for Carbon Transition… Trimtab is hiring a manager of investments and an impact associate in New York… Enterprise Community Partners is recruiting a community development finance intern… Hillspire seeks an impact investing legal director… The Development Guarantee Group has an opening for a global portfolio manager.
Project Fame invites investors to take part in its annual climate investment survey by Thursday, Feb. 13… The GIIN is surveying impact investors for its 2025 Impact Investor Survey, which is open through Friday, Feb. 28… MIT Solve opened applications for its 2025 Global Challenges and Indigenous Communities Fellowship, which have a combined $1.5 million in funding available.
👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.
Thank you for your impact!
– Feb. 5, 2025
