It’s been a whirlwind month, marked by the close of our $135M Fund II and our first Annual General Meeting (AGM) taking place during New York Climate Week. We’re pleased to share a few reflections and updates.

Just ahead of NY Climate Week, we were honored that The Wall Street Journal wrote about our Fund II close. The article emphasized our:

If you don’t have WSJ access, you can read our full press release and media coverage here.

A Maturing Market
The “tourist crowd” of past years has largely moved on, leaving behind a core community of committed companies and investors focused on building scalable ventures to power the energy transition. This tighter alignment around purpose and execution is a welcome sign of maturation.

Inefficiency as Opportunity
Participation still trails the magnitude of the opportunity. The market remains inefficient — constrained by global uncertainty and mixed signals about the U.S. innovation ecosystem. Yet inefficiency creates advantage: those investing and building with conviction today are well-positioned to define the next decade of growth.

Mission Over Market
The conversation around rebranding climate tech gained traction — with calls to make it sound less politicized or more market-driven. But this misses the point: climate tech isn’t just a market, it’s a mission. On the streets of New York, we saw that mission in action through collaboration, conviction, and urgency. Unlike a decade ago, climate impacts are now a lived reality for much of the world, giving the sector both resilience and purpose — and positioning the next generation of builders and investors to turn that mission into durable, scalable outcomes.

Fund I is fully deployed and performing strongly, while Fund II — now 1.5x the size — has already backed six dynamic companies driving change in clean energy, resilient supply chains, and AI-enabled systems. From batteries and carbon removal to sustainable construction and electrification, our portfolio companies are scaling solutions critical to the energy transition.

A focused deep dive into supply chain and manufacturing reinforced a key truth: operational readiness and cost competitiveness often mark the difference in early-stage success.

We are deeply grateful to our LPs and founders for fueling this momentum. Looking forward, our mandate is not just to back transformative companies, but to bridge the gap between the scale of the energy transition and the speed of capital. That requires more than investment — it calls for networks, conviction, and the courage to lean into places where others hesitate.

By sharing our story, surfacing founder introductions, and linking us with fellow investors, you help extend our reach. Together, we can turn today’s inefficiencies into tomorrow’s breakthroughs and accelerate the path to a resilient, low-carbon future.

This issue marks the start of our new quarterly + ad-hoc newsletter cadence — sharing timely insights and updates tied to key milestones like Climate Week, our AGM, and other major moments across the VoLo Earth community.

A well-written explainer on how grid modernization, peak demand, and heat-driven load are colliding — reinforcing our thesis that distributed energy and demand flexibility are where the next efficiency frontier lies.

This report quantifies the economic value of batteries in modern grids — validating our early investments in grid optimization software (like Gaiascope) and proving that batteries are becoming the “market makers” of renewables.

An important signal for the circular economy: secondary recovery and urban mining are emerging as the next critical resource plays — aligning with Nth Cycle’s thesis on clean, domestic material supply.

A sharp take (including quotes from our Co-Founder and Managing Partner Joe Goodman) on how policy, politics, and market momentum are reshaping U.S. mineral independence — and why venture capital has an increasingly vital role to play in bridging the gap between lab and large-scale supply.

Amory Lovins (VoLo Earth Advisor and RMI’s Chairman Emeritus) argues that efficiency and intelligence will always outperform brute-force generation — a timely reminder that the future grid will be smart, not just large.

In this milestone episode, Kingsmill Bond (a former colleague of ours from RMI) and Daan Walter at Ember reflect on the shift from proving that the energy transition is feasible to scaling solutions amidst political headwinds. They argue that the next decade demands not justification but execution — and that the real battleground will move from technology to policy, capital flows, and overcoming systemic resistance.