Announcing Energize Endurance

We are excited to share that Energize Growth has evolved to Energize Endurance, marking our latest step in Energize’s commitment to investing in climate solutions with ambition. Through our Endurance strategy, we seek to make minority and control investments into self-sufficient, profitable (or near-profitable) businesses to help them achieve sustainable growth. Endurance will operate as a parallel strategy to our existing Ventures strategy, building upon our Growth strategy’s five-year track record of investing in and helping scale later-stage companies that fit within our climate investment thesis.

Energize’s Strategic Foundation

Energize was founded in 2016, while the climate software market was only beginning to find its footing. The energy transition was underway, but its digital infrastructure was underestimated—and underfunded. At the time, our Ventures strategy was built to match the need:  to provide innovative, asset-light companies with capital to gain market traction, expand reach and build the tools that are today enabling scale and sustainability across electrification, decarbonization, infrastructure resilience and more.

But over time, the companies within this sector grew, expanding into multinational organizations with hundreds of employees and tens of millions of dollars in revenue. As the market evolved, we noticed something missing: a funding gap that left healthy, essential climate companies stuck between venture financing and exit. These weren't the headline-grabbing startups, but rather the backbone companies building the infrastructure for a digitized and decarbonized future—and they needed capital partners. This is why, in 2021, we announced our Growth strategy, an investment arm providing later-stage climate software companies with the capital and operational support they needed to achieve mass market adoption.

Today’s Landscape

After five years of enacting our later-stage strategy, the market opportunity for climate solutions has grown once again. Established technologies—now foundational to global energy supply, mobilization, and infrastructure—are no longer chasing unicorn valuations, but reaching healthy, consistent growth. Simultaneously, the investment landscape has entered a new era. Rising interest rates have made capital more expensive, while growth capital has thinned as generalist investors leave the climate sector for headlining AI topics.

As a result, instead of a “growth at all costs” mentality, we’re now seeing mature, market-tested companies making long-term choices and navigating complex ecosystems—building sustainable businesses that can weather any storm. To thrive in this new landscape, companies no longer simply need dollars, they also need capital partners with experience, patience and thematic expertise to help them achieve durable scale.

Endurance: The Next Step of Capital Partnership

That's why we're evolving Energize Growth into Energize Endurance—because climate solutions are here to stay, and they need capital structures that are built to last with them. Endurance still has a lot in common with our Growth strategy:

• We are still making $25-125 million investments in later-stage companies.
• We are still laser-focused on climate industries tagged to high-growth sectors of the economy.
• We are still committed to partnering with industry-leading executive teams.
• We continue to look for strong retention metrics and deep customer partnerships that demonstrate a company’s solution as an indispensable business need.
• Endurance and Ventures strategies will continue to have separate funds, teams and investment mandates – but still work closely in collaboration with one another.

But we have evolved to match the market through a few key changes:

• Our Endurance strategy makes both minority and control investments.
• We emphasize profitability, targeting companies that practice strong capital efficiency and are profitable at the time of underwriting or within 18 months.
• We will look primarily outside our Ventures portfolio for Endurance deals, focusing on new engagements rather than follow-on investments.
• Whereas our Growth strategy targeted purely software, our Endurance strategy explores software-enabled solutions and services within climate.

In essence, our Endurance strategy is built to match today’s market, backing companies that can grow sustainably while maintaining the unit economics that create lasting value and profitability.

Providing the tools to succeed

In this shift, we’re committed to the foundation we’ve had since 2016—being the best partner for businesses as they scale. Through our Energize EDGE platform, we will continue delivering the strategic value creation that has driven our success: talent, go-to-market strategy, impact and ESG, communications, and finance and operations. This comprehensive engagement starts during diligence and extends throughout the investment lifecycle, helping our asset-light software and services companies build sustainable growth trajectories while maintaining strong financial fundamentals.

Additionally, just as we always have, we take active board positions and work alongside management teams to drive meaningful strategic influence.

An Enduring Commitment

We launched Energize to help build the companies that will transform how industries operate. That mission hasn't changed. We're now more convinced than ever that the winners in this space will be the companies that combine bold vision with business fundamentals strong enough to endure any market cycle, and we believe Energize is positioned to be the optimal partner for these businesses as they scale.

After all, the energy transition is a marathon – not a sprint. And in marathons, endurance always wins.