Chris Anderson, longtime curator of TED, is assembling a $300 million vehicle to tackle climate tech’s toughest choke point: financing first-of-a-kind plants. The All Aboard Coalition aims to write catalytic checks that help companies leap from validated pilots to $100–$200 million growth rounds required for initial commercial facilities—precisely where many promising climate hardware startups stall.
The pitch isn’t that $300 million alone will bankroll steel, cement, fuels, batteries, and grid-scale storage at commercial scale. It’s that the fund operates as a signal amplifier, using a deep bench of veteran climate investors to crowd in generalist growth equity, infrastructure capital, and strategics that typically wait for someone else to de-risk the first project.
Why the “missing middle” matters
In climate tech, physics is the moat and the money sink. Building a FOAK (first-of-a-kind) plant—be it a long-duration battery factory, an e-fuels facility, or low-carbon cement kiln—often requires nine-figure checks before banks will consider project finance. Venture funds prefer R&D or software-scale velocity; infrastructure funds require stable cash flows and proven performance. That gap is the valley of death.
PWC’s State of Climate Tech analysis reported a sharp pullback in late-stage climate venture in 2023, even as early-stage activity remained relatively resilient. BloombergNEF has noted that project finance is abundant for mature assets like utility-scale solar and wind, but scarce for unproven industrial processes. The result: companies with strong pilots struggle to fund the first commercial unit that unlocks cost curves and bankability.
The stakes are large. The International Energy Agency estimates clean energy investment surpassed $1.7 trillion recently, but most of that flows to well-understood technologies. Decarbonizing heavy industry and long-duration storage needs a bridge from lab to large—where technical risk, EPC complexity, and offtake uncertainty collide.
How All Aboard plans to de-risk FOAK
Anderson’s coalition brings together a who’s who of climate backers—firms such as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Khosla Ventures, Galvanize Climate Solutions, Prelude Ventures, DCVC, S2G, and others. Not every firm must invest, but their involvement creates a due-diligence flywheel: when a company clears this group’s bar, the signal is designed to draw in larger checks from pensions, sovereign funds, corporate balance sheets, and crossover investors.
The strategy meshes with powerful public-finance tools. The Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office has more than $400 billion in lending authority to back innovative projects; the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations provides grants and cost-share for near-commercial deployments. On the tax side, transferability provisions from recent legislation make credits like 45Q (carbon capture), 45V (clean hydrogen), 45Z (clean fuel production), and 48C (advanced manufacturing) easier to monetize, improving FOAK economics without diluting equity.
Think of All Aboard as the equity spark that completes the capital stack: a mix of structured equity, equipment finance, government guarantees, and offtake-backed revenue that nudges projects over the investment committee line.
Where capital could move the needle fastest
Long-duration energy storage: Companies pursuing iron-air, thermal, or flow batteries need first plants to prove multi-day storage at grid scale. FOAK packages in the $150–$300 million range can validate multi-year performance and capacity payments with utilities.
Industrial heat and materials: Low-carbon cement, steel, and process heat (including thermal batteries) require novel kilns, electrolyzers, and high-temperature systems. One successful commercial line can cut costs 20–40% by standardizing engineering and supply chains, setting up follow-on project finance.
Clean fuels and carbon: Sustainable aviation fuel and e-fuels plants—plus modular direct air capture or biogenic carbon removal—are hungry for construction capital and bankable offtake. Early units can leverage 45Z and corporate procurement to underwrite revenue while performance data de-risks the next wave.
The power of a credible stamp of approval
In venture, some firms’ participation materially lowers perceived risk. All Aboard is attempting to create that dynamic for later-stage climate hardware: a consortium whose joint diligence, sector expertise, and board-level support signal that technology, unit economics, and execution plans have cleared a high bar.
If it works, the multiplier matters more than the fund size. A two- to five-times crowd-in ratio from generalist and infrastructure investors would turn $300 million into $600 million to $1.5 billion for FOAK builds—enough to tip multiple sub-sectors into the “nth-of-a-kind” phase where cost curves bend quickly.
Risks, guardrails, and what to watch
$300 million is catalytic, not comprehensive. Success hinges on disciplined portfolio construction, tight alignment with public co-funding, and offtakes that lock in margins through commodity cycles. Permitting, grid interconnection, EPC availability, and supply-chain constraints remain nontrivial execution risks.
Investors will look for transparent governance to manage potential conflicts among member firms, clear criteria for FOAK readiness, and evidence of crowd-in from pensions and insurance capital. Practical KPIs: number of first plants financed, time from investment to commercial operation, and the ratio of follow-on project finance unlocked per dollar deployed.
The climate capital stack is finally filling out: early venture for science, government for demonstrations, and infrastructure money for scale. What’s been missing is a coordinated bridge for the first real plants. If All Aboard delivers the signal—and the syndicates—Anderson’s $300 million could be the small, smart wedge that opens a very big door.