Foresight 50 investor Active Impact Investments proves that cleantech drives both climate action and economic resilience.
In 2024, 14% of Canadian VC investments were in cleantech, with the average valued at $18.39M. While significant, a large funding gap remains for companies reaching commercialization and looking to secure buyers—especially in the capital-intensive cleantech sector. Kim Furlong, CEO of Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA), states:
“There’s no question that capital is available for later-stage companies, and we continue to see investors backing more mature companies and proven Canadian innovators...However, we are seeing ongoing constraints at the pre-seed and seed stages. This decrease is significant for future rounds of financing, ensuring a healthy pipeline of early-stage companies is critical to long-term ecosystem strength.”
Canadian companies are developing groundbreaking solutions that are urgently needed to tackle climate change—but ideas mean nothing without support and robust funding to help them scale. The Foresight 50 Showcase launched in 2021 to provide Canadian cleantech ventures with invaluable opportunities to connect with the right investors and receive enhanced brand recognition and credibility as one of the nation’s most investible cleantech companies.
Understanding this complex landscape and what truly takes a company from concept to scale requires expert perspective, which is why we recently connected with Sam Hasty, Partner at Active Impact Investments and a 2025 Foresight 50 judge. Active Impact Investments is recognized as Canada's largest seed fund specifically dedicated to climate technology. We asked them how their company balances climate action with ROI, the current state of Canadian cleantech markets and future trends, and what they look for in a Foresight 50 candidate.
Balancing Impact & ROI
At the Fund level, we just completed our final close of Fund III at $110 million CAD, more than doubling our total assets under management to $180 million. This is our largest fund to date and represents a strong signal of confidence in both our investment strategy and the future of climate tech.
Q: How do you balance financial returns with your commitment to measurable climate impact, and what frameworks do you use to ensure investments drive real change?
A: Our core thesis is that products with better economics for customers, with cleaner, better, and more efficient solutions will generate outsized returns. We target companies that eliminate the ‘green premium’ but also have a strong link between their revenue growth and the size of their impact.
Climate impact is the first criteria when we look at potential investments. To qualify as “climate tech” the product must achieve meaningful emissions/waste reduction, advance clean technologies, or enable a massive systems change towards climate goals.
Most important to us is measurable CO₂ mitigation and the connection that mitigation has with the growth of the business. After we invest, our team works directly with founders to systematize impact measurement and reporting. It’s important to us that impact measurement be additive to their business, like good accounting systems, rather than a box checking exercise.
Canada vs. Markets
Q: How do you view the Canadian cleantech investment landscape compared to other major markets like the U.S., Europe, or Asia?
A: We’re seeing a huge influx of high quality talent coming into Canada right now for a variety of reasons. At the seed stage, where team quality is the strongest predictor of success, this influx of global talent is a huge tailwind for our strategy. We have fantastic universities, the highest number of educated working age adults per capita than anywhere in the G7, and experts in materials, resource production, and industrials. We are already seeing an influx of people coming from the US as visas become more difficult to obtain.
Canada is proving to be not only a place where world-class researchers and engineers want to live, but also where they can access funding, mentorship, and supportive policy frameworks to launch impactful climate tech ventures.
Sam Hasty Partner, Active Impact Investments
However, one of the Canadian ecosystem’s key weaknesses lies in the ambition and risk appetite for the broader capital ecosystem. While early investors like us are catalyzing promising innovations, the follow-on capital required to scale these solutions globally is still relatively risk-averse compared to ecosystems like the US or parts of Europe. Bridging this gap will unlock significantly more climate impact and economic opportunity from Canadian cleantech. This can be achieved through through deeper pools of late-stage capital with larger ambition for global leadership in a given category and an ecosystem that encourages founders to be aggressive in their positioning and growth.
Cleantech’s Resilience
Q: In a potentially turbulent economic environment, what makes cleantech a resilient asset class, and how do you communicate this to your LPs?
A: Cleantech is inherently resilient because it is currently addressing non-discretionary, infrastructure-level needs that are pivotal to our quality of life—power reliability, materials efficiency and accessibility, and water access and sustainability. These services remain essential regardless of consumer spending cycles. In Canada, energy security and decentralization are driving investment in distributed and local clean energy systems, especially in rural and remote regions.
Additionally, there's a strong pull from both corporates and international markets: Corporates are seeking solutions that future-proof their business in a changing world in a way that doesn’t break the bank, and Canada has strong systems that attract the best people and support early-stage founders through programs like Foresight.
We communicate this resilience to our LPs through regular investor updates that include our assessments on shifts in the macroeconomic landscape, and highlight how current conditions are impacting our portfolio companies and shaping our strategy for follow-on and new investments.
Trends to Watch
Q: What breakthroughs or transformative trends in cleantech are you most excited about right now, and how do you see these innovations reshaping the market in the coming years?
A: We’re excited about trends that reflect a broader maturation in cleantech, from single-point solutions to integrated systems that deliver financial and environmental returns at scale, and play a foundational role in decarbonizing the global economy. I am particularly excited about:
1. Helping our grid adapt in an increasingly complex and variable world.
Renewables penetration is going way up, which creates new challenges grid operators need to manage. Building new infrastructure, such as new power lines, takes time—we need to find ways to flexibly manage existing projects and a greater quantity of smaller power producers as efficiently as possible given growing labour shortages. This has made operating the grid more complex. However, advances in software and control technologies enable grid operators to push the limits and bring on more variable power sources. The tools we’re excited about, like ThinkLabs, improve how we manage and plan for the future of grids, making local energy systems more resilient and efficient, pushing the limits on renewables penetration.
2. Materials innovation and the more efficient utilization of existing production.
Canada’s economy has been built on natural resources over the last hundred years. We believe that in this next phase of innovation, we’re well positioned to lead the world in the most optimal production of our natural resources and new pathways to utilizing natural resources that are greener, circular and more sustainable. For example, copper is crucial to achieving our net zero goals, as an essential component of solar panels, EV’s, wind turbines, and other clean technologies. Canada has long been a global leader in mining, so we’re excited about taking this institutional knowledge and pairing it with growing AI expertise to optimize the extraction of metals using the least carbon-intensive methods possible.
Canadian companies are leveraging the strength of the AI ecosystem here and existing mining experience to extract material in a more efficient and greener way and to create new input materials that have lower carbon footprints and/or higher value to end consumers.
3. AI-enabled efficiency across infrastructure.
Artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in optimizing complex systems, from water treatment and building energy use to agricultural operations. These tools synthesize real-time and historical data to improve decision-making, reduce emissions, and cut operational costs. As adoption increases, AI is becoming a core enabler of both economic and environmental performance. At the same time, AI itself is highly energy-intensive, and we’re closely watching technologies that can meet the sector’s rapidly growing electricity demands—whether through cleaner data center infrastructure, smarter energy management, or next-generation power sources.
4. Anyone using business model innovation to get cleantech out faster!
Some of our best investments to date have been in companies that are taking products that already exist to market in better ways that make more economic sense for customers, eliminating the green premium. From heat pumps to solar & batteries to refrigeration energy management, we will always be excited about people that are finding ways to get existing emissions friendly tech out to customers as quickly and affordably as possible!
Featured Portfolio Companies
Q: Do you have a technology project that you have invested in recently that you are most excited about?
A: We have made 7 out of 25 portfolio investments out of our third fund, covering a diverse set of business models and climate tech verticals inclduing water tech, AI grid optimization, home and transportation electrification, carbon and energy efficiency—even wildfire prevention.
As we head into wildfire season, I am excited about Skyward and their weather modelling software to distribute coated microfibres that disrupt the electrical field in storms and prevent lightning strikes that start wildfires.
We’re also really excited about the work Jetson is doing to electrify heating and cooling. Heat Pumps may not be sexy, but they’re a linchpin to decarbonization, and Jetson is getting amazing and affordable heat pumps into peoples homes quickly.
What Makes a Venture Investible
Q: The Foresight 50 Showcase is coming up in November. What qualities do you look for in a venture before choosing to invest in their company?
A: As mentioned above, our first screen is for climate impact. We need to see a significant climate impact potential before we look deeper at any opportunity. If we find that potential for significant climate impact, then we look at three core pillars: team, timing, and traction.
1. Team
We look for founders with exceptional potential—most people invest in or hire based on experience alone. Experience can be valuable, but it’s a less effective predictor of success than future potential. We have a proprietary process for assessing founder grit, intelligence and coachability. We also assess how well co-founders and key members of the management team work together, what key gaps still exist within the management team and whether they have the operational chops to scale the business and realize their big ambition.
2. Timing
We evaluate whether the market is primed for the solution being offered and spend significant time working to understand the headwinds and tailwinds that exist today, and where we think these are going. This includes looking at policy and regulatory trends, shifts in buyer behaviour, and where the company sits in the technology adoption curve. We want to see a window of opportunity that aligns with our fund’s lifecycle and a sense of urgency in the market.
3. Traction
Even at the earliest stages, we expect to see early signals of market validation and founders that are moving at an exceptionally fast pace. This could be in the form of revenue, signed pilots, TRL improvements, strong user engagement, or secured partnerships. We pay close attention to customer acquisition strategies, revenue quality, and the pace of continued traction.
Ultimately, we invest in companies where these three elements intersect: strong teams, entering the market at the right moment, with exceptional pace that signals future scale. This lens has guided our portfolio construction across multiple funds and has helped us back ventures positioned to deliver both high-impact and high-return outcomes.
Sam Hasty Partner, Active Impact Investments
Since 2021, Foresight 50 ventures have raised over $2.25B in capital–that’s the power of visibility, credibility, and connection. Foresight 50 spotlights Canada’s most investible cleantech ventures, connecting them with a global network of investors like Active Impact Investments who are ready to back bold solutions to our climate and productivity crisis.
Whether you're decarbonizing industry, transforming energy systems, or rethinking how we move, build, and grow—Foresight 50 is your chance to scale your impact and connect with investors.
