London and San Francisco-based Generation Investment Management, a sustainable investment firm with approximately $22 billion of assets under management, has announced the close of its $1 billion Generation IM Sustainable Solutions Fund III.
The new fund will seek to make to make meaningful minority investments of between $50 and $150 million in innovative companies with high-growth potential.
The Generation Sustainable Solutions Fund will focus on investments in growth-stage businesses with well-established technology and commercial traction in three areas:
- Planetary health: low carbon solutions transforming mobility, food, energy, and enterprise
- People health: enabling health outcomes and a lower-cost, accessible healthcare system
- Financial inclusion: supporting access to finance and an equitable future of work.
“We believe that we are at the early stages of a technology-led sustainability revolution, which has the scale of the industrial revolution, and the pace of the digital revolution,” said Al Gore, Chairman and Co-Founder of Generation.
“Globally, we see the rapid adoption of sustainable solutions at an important inflection point,” said Lilly Wollman, Partner of the Growth Equity platform. “By taking advantage of technology cost-down curves, companies can drive sustainable transition through profitable growth and innovative business models.”
“Sustainability is about both what a company does (the products and services it sells) and how a company operates,” said Lila Preston, Partner and Co-Head of the Growth Equity platform. “A hallmark of our investment approach is that we take a systems-level view and leverage our long-term horizon and deep industry insights.”
The first two investments in Generation’s Sustainable Solutions Fund have been SOPHiA GENETICS, a company leveraging its deep expertise in life sciences and computing to democratise data driven medicine, and Andela, the engineering-as-a-service business enabling fast growing global enterprises to access Africa’s top software engineering talent.
The fund builds on Generation Investment Management’s global investment platform which is based on a robust research methodology, a long-term view and differentiated insight into what sustainable organizations require to effectively accelerate market adoption.
“Generation is a pure play sustainable investment manager. We seek businesses that provide goods and services consistent with a low-carbon, prosperous, equitable, healthy and fair society,” said David Blood, Co-Founder and Senior Partner at the firm. “Sustainable investing is all we do, and all we will ever do. With a continuum of capital, and the collaboration between our public and private investment teams, we can be true long-term equity partners to the very best companies big and small.”
The Sustainable Solutions Fund has a global and diverse institutional investor base. With a presence in London and San Francisco, the Growth Equity team of 14 people offers portfolio companies a rich diversity of thinking and experience. The team represents eight nationalities and nearly 60% of the team is female.
