THE United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a development finance institution of the US government, has invested US$15 million in Wavemaker Impact, a Singapore-based climate tech venture capital (VC) fund that covers South-east Asia.

Wavemaker Impact is a venture builder, co-founding sustainability startups with seasoned entrepreneurs. It has launched six companies in areas such as biochar for carbon sequestration, regenerative agriculture and sustainable fuels.

The amount raised will make up part of its inaugural fund, for which fundraising efforts are underway, Wavemaker Impact said on Thursday (Sep 14). The investment will go towards expanding its portfolio to 10 companies by end-2023, and to 16 companies by end-2024.

Each company can potentially remove 100 million tonnes of carbon and rake in US$100 million in revenue, said Wavemaker Impact. The VC firm aims to lower the global carbon budget by 10 per cent by 2035.

Launched in October 2021, Wavemaker Impact has strategic partnerships with organisations such as Enterprise Singapore, the Economic Development Board’s (EDB) corporate venture building arm EDB New Ventures, and the United Nations Development Programme.

“We see strong alignment with the DFC’s focus on agriculture, food and land use, which account for approximately half of South-east Asia’s emissions, as well as decentralised infrastructure,” said Quentin Vaquette, founding partner at Wavemaker Impact.

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“While technical solutions to reduce emissions economically exist, customer-centric businesses are still lacking. We believe that entrepreneurs hold the key to creating commercially viable and customer-oriented companies that can scale to serve millions of users and achieve rapid reductions in emissions.”