At a Glance
Earthshot Ventures is a climate technology venture firm headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, dating to 2020 and unveiled publicly in September 2021 as a spinout of Elemental Excelerator, the organization that pioneered the accelerator model for climate technologies. The fund launched with $60 million and backs outlier teams riding powerful technology waves toward category-defining companies, writing checks from pre-seed and seed through Series A and Series B and beyond. Its stated mandate is climate technology and sustainability solutions aimed at urgent environmental challenges, and its listed sector coverage spans climate alongside consumer, fintech, and aerospace and defense.
Three Elemental veterans run the fund: Dawn Lippert, who founded and led Elemental; Mike Jackson, Elemental's investor in residence since 2017; and Ramsay Siegal, who ran Elemental's portfolio. That lineage is the firm's structural advantage. Elemental spent a decade placing early climate technologies into real deployments with utilities, ports, airlines, and municipalities, and Earthshot uses the same relationships to get portfolio companies into paying pilots rather than pilots that lead nowhere.
The limited partner base is unusually visible for a debut fund of this size: Emerson Collective, Microsoft, Impact Engine, Stafford Capital Partners, McKinley Alaska, the Employees' Retirement System of Hawaii, John Doerr, Tom Steyer, Chris Cox, and David Crane. Investments include Verdox, Charm Industrial, Living Carbon, and Solid Power on the carbon and materials side, with later positions in KoBold Metals, Vaulted Deep, and Emerald AI. The firm funds both hardware and software, and positions itself less as a check writer than as a route to the customers, regulators, and policy makers who decide whether a climate technology reaches scale.
“Invests in climate technology and sustainability solutions to address urgent environmental challenges.”
Earthshot Ventures was unveiled in September 2021 with a $60 million debut fund, spun out of Elemental Excelerator, the climate accelerator that had been running deployment-stage programs for more than a decade. The vehicle invests from seed through Series B across both hardware and software.
Its limited partner base is disclosed and unusually recognizable for a fund of that size: Emerson Collective, Microsoft, Impact Engine, Stafford Capital Partners, McKinley Alaska, the Employees' Retirement System of Hawaii, and individual commitments from John Doerr, Tom Steyer, Chris Cox, and David Crane. The Hawaii state pension commitment ties the fund to the market where Elemental built its early deployment track record. No successor vehicle has been announced publicly, so the debut pool and its follow-on capacity remain the firm's disclosed base. Directory records list $50 million in assets under management against the $60 million announced at launch.
Earthshot Ventures primarily invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B+ stages. This means they focus on companies that are at the earliest idea or prototype phase.
Earthshot Ventures is headquartered in Honolulu, HI. Many of their portfolio companies are also based in this region, though they invest across geographies.
Earthshot Ventures focuses on investments in Aerospace & Defense, Other, Consumer, Fintech, Climate. Their portfolio reflects deep expertise and networks within these sectors.
Earthshot Ventures's typical investment check size ranges from $100K to $5M. Actual amounts may vary based on the stage, sector, and specific opportunity.
Earthshot Ventures manages approximately $50M in assets under management (AUM) across their funds.
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