Here’s the Latest on Fifth Wall’s Early-Stage Climate Tech Fund
Harri is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. She previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find her on Twitter and send tips on L.A. startups and venture capital to harrison@dot.la.
Fifth Wall, the fast-growing real estate tech venture firm, revealed Monday that it has scored $140 million for its Early-Stage Climate Technology Fund. That's up from $116.8 million earlier this month, when the firm last disclosed its fundraising efforts for the climate investment vehicle in an amended SEC filing.
In December, Fifth Wall announced it had brought in prolific clean-tech investor Greg Smithies to head its efforts to "decarbonize the built world." That's when the firm went public about its plan to raise at least $200 million to invest in climate tech. The firm said today that it has brought in another partner to co-lead its climate team: Peter Gajdoš, the San Francisco-based former head of venture investments for wealth management group IPM.
Last year, Fifth Wall co-founder Brendan Wallace predicted that the real estate industry would one day become "the biggest spender on climate tech for no other reason than its contribution to the carbon problem."
Fifth Wall declined to comment publicly on the fund when reached for comment last week by dot.LA.
With backing from Montreal-based Ivanhoé Cambridge, which holds tens of billions of dollars in real-estate assets, Fifth Wall's climate fund led a $16 million investment in Sealed earlier this year alongside actor Robert Downey Jr's climate fund. Other real estate investors in Fifth Wall's climate fund include Equity Residential, Hudson Pacific Properties, Invitation Homes and Kimco Realty Corporation, Fifth Wall announced Monday.
New York-based Sealed is on "a quest to retrofit the U.S.' existing residential building stock and help them run more efficiently," Smithies wrote in June. Part of that equation involves getting homeowners aboard the heat pump train.
The technology could help American households considerably slash carbon emissions by 142 million metric tons annually, according to research released by Carbon Switch.
Sealed is one of at least three startups backed by Smithies in recent months, per the investor's LinkedIn. Others include Austin-based 3D-printed buildings startup Icon, which announced a $207 million late-August raise, and Emeryville-based pea milk company Ripple Foods. It disclosed a more than $57 million raise around the same time.This story has been updated to include the latest fundraising figures from Fifth Wall.
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Harri is dot.LA's senior finance reporter. She previously worked for Gizmodo, Fast Company, VentureBeat and Flipboard. Find her on Twitter and send tips on L.A. startups and venture capital to harrison@dot.la.
