This is an excerpt from The Gigacorn Hunter: Seven Principles for a Climate Investor (2025).
In 2018, I sat on a Milken Institute conference panel where I shared my
perspectives on climate change and investing. Afterward, I was approached by an
affluent and storied family of three from Atlanta — who had many questions
about how to qualify an investment as climate-positive, where to find these
opportunities, and how to understand the scale of their impact.
The youngest asked me, “So, are you hunting for climate unicorns?”
That was the right question, but I hadn’t realized it yet. I asked him to
explain.
“A climate unicorn has a positive impact on climate change,” he told me.
A unicorn startup is a venture-backed company that has achieved a valuation of
over $1 billion. The term — first coined in 2013 by Silicon Valley VC Aileen
Lee — was apt, because such startups
are as elusive as the mythical creatures that are impossible to find or catch.
The unicorn terms remain in use by investors, even though they are not as
elusive today as they once were. According to CB
Insights, as of 2023,
there were more than 1,200 unicorns in the US. They include many companies you
know — including Airbnb, Grammarly, LinkedIn, Meta, OpenAI,
Stripe, SpaceX and Uber.
Knowing that a billion tons of carbon is referred to as a Gigaton, the
contraction felt natural. Gigaton plus Unicorn equals Gigacorn.
And there it was. Inspired by this young man’s question, I coined the term
“Gigacorn” to describe the companies I want to invest in — startups with the
potential to exceed $1 billion valuations while avoiding or removing at least a
billion tons of carbon.
At that moment, I believe I became the first monikered “Gigacorn Hunter.”
Climatech
investing
is clearly an idea whose time has come. The world’s collective consciousness is
calling for a new breed of investors — arguably the most ambitious of us being
Gigacorn Hunters.
We Gigacorn Hunters are climate optimists. We see great promise in the
environmental, social and economic challenges we face. We believe that the
climate problems we face can be solved. By investing in companies that focus and
have the potential to reach Gigacorn status, we empower companies with the
resources to develop and market technologies that drive the transition to a
low-carbon economy, to what I call the Decarbonization of Everything (DoE)
era.
As I mentioned, the entire economy must be reinvented if we are to decarbonize
the world. As my partner at ClimateIC, Kevin
Kimsa, likes to say,
“Everything must be reimagined, reengineered and reinvented.” Everything we use
for work, travel and recreation must be reconceived:
buildings,
cars, trucks,
factories,
farms — nothing is off the table.
With each challenge comes the potential to create Gigacorns that generate
billions of dollars of market, commercial, community and environmental value.
There is plenty of space for every investment nickel that will produce superior
returns.
Right now, there are so many climatech investment opportunities with the
potential to become Gigacorns, or even Megacorns (million-ton potential) and
Decacorns (10-billion-ton potential); but the capacity to fund them remains
limited. Funds like mine, ClimateIC, surely can’t fill them all. As of early
2024, there were over 1,185 dedicated or associated climate investment funds
worldwide — and together, we haven’t even come close to funding all the
potential and necessary Gigacorns worldwide.
At ClimateIC, our team researches more than 500 companies annually; and we
finance less than 1 percent of them. We only invest in companies we believe are
potential Gigacorns. As a growth-oriented fund, our investments must also have
existing commercial sales and show scalable growth. Across our investment
portfolio, we anticipate 2.5 times the return on cash and a 25 percent internal
rate of return (IRR).
This financial return is the primary reason we founded ClimateIC. We believe
that by demonstrating to conventional investors that climate returns are as good
or better than conventional investing, we will draw that capital off the
sidelines and out of the conventional economy to accelerate the pace of the DoE
transition to a low-carbon economy.
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Nelson Switzer is a Gigacorn Hunter.
A Managing Partner at Climate Innovation Capital, Nelson’s career has included advising and leading the sustainability, environmental and corporate responsibility offices of some of the world’s most influential companies - including Nestlé, PwC, Centrica and the Royal Bank of Canada. He is recognized as a pioneer in the fields of sustainability strategy, sustainable finance and ESG; and as an expert in climate change, water and pollution.
Published Aug 5, 2025 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST