Why we are backing Nodes & Links to make our critical infrastructure more efficient and sustainable
By: Christian Hernandez, Rahul Parekh & Alexandra Perez
The world needs to build — bridges, roads, railways, energy infrastructure- and we need to build more efficiently and sustainably. McKinsey estimates that we need to invest $3.5 trillion into infrastructure per year through 2035 to keep up with expected GDP growth and a further $1 trillion per year to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The post-COVID recovery plans put forward by the EU and the Biden Administration are seeking to deploy further trillions of dollars into sustainable infrastructure like EV charging, renewable energy, resilient grids and energy efficient housing.
Our ambition with 2150 is to identify the big problems of our built world and to identify technologies that can help address them. No problem is bigger for our cities -or our planet - than our global addiction to cement and concrete.
Cement is the grey powder we each know, concrete is the slushy material we see being poured at construction sites, which uses cement as one of its primary inputs. Humanity is pouring 4.4 billion tons of concrete each year and rising. The cement and concrete industry generates a staggering 7–8% of world CO2 emissions. If…
By: Jacob Bro
Why investing across the Urban Stack is the biggest lever for creating a sustainable future as well as one of the largest economic opportunities in the world today.
Today we unveil 2150, a €200 million venture capital fund that seeks to back the technologies that will make our urban environment more efficient, resilient and sustainable.
“2150”, our name, represents both our ambition and our legacy. Our ambition is to back technologies that ensure that our cities become a benefit to our planet, not a burden. And the world in 2150 is the one we actually want to live in. …
By: Rahul Parekh
We created 2150 with a vision to build a new approach to venture investing, one that includes the people experiencing the problems we are trying to solve and aims to construct a more positive future.
Our focus on diversity is core to that aim.
We believe that the best outcomes start with a team who focuses on solving the biggest problems, combining a sense of purpose with the pursuit of performance. These great people can come from anywhere; any location, background, educational institution, gender or ethnicity.
Currently, the venture capital industry has one of the most homogenous…
By: Nicole LeBlanc
It’s one thing to come up with a brilliant idea on how to solve a problem. It’s another thing to ensure it has a global scale. The latter is typically what sets apart the startups that survive and those that do not. Building solutions within the urban tech and sustainability sectors is hard. Entrepreneurs are working with large complex customers such as cities, real estate developers or large multinationals. Products often require a mix of hardware and software, navigation of complex regulatory environments, or balancing of multiple stakeholders.
In order to achieve success, startups need these large…
By: Christian Jølck
In one of the early conversations with my 2150 colleagues, we discussed the unique and significant challenge of working in the built environment: the fact that unlike most other industries the products you create must commonly retain utility, value and significance for 100 years. This time horizon and the often substantial capital investments required, mean that the industry can be slow-moving, but it also demands a focus on longevity. …
As we set out to build 2150, we were humble enough to know that there were a lot of things that we did not know and that our own team would never be big enough to cover all the bases. Venture Capital, after all, is about envisioning and supporting the future, and the technologies that will power that future might not yet even have emerged.
So we set about bringing together a group of brilliant minds who could join our mission to make the world of 2150 a reality. We sought out individuals who spend their time thinking about the…
