Climate-focused VC investor Gigascale Capital announced the launch of Gigascale Capital Fund I, a new $250 million fund targeting early-stage companies that are “rebuilding the physical economy for climate impact.”

Founded in 2023 by former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, Gigascale invests in companies developing technologies enabling energy, materials, and infrastructure systems to scale, be cheaper, more productive and cleaner, with a focus on areas including clean energy and grid infrastructure – and the supply chains that support them – as well as AI applied to the design, manufacturing, and deployment of physical systems.

Schroeper said:

“Climate impact won’t come from asking the world to adopt worse systems for virtuous reasons. It comes when a different technical approach makes the cleaner system also simpler, more scalable, and cost competitive.”

To date, Gigascale has invested in more than 25 companies across clean energy, advanced manufacturing, grid infrastructure, and physical AI, with portfolio companies including small nuclear reactor startup Radiant, fusion tech company Xcimer, sustainable chemical producer Dioxycle, and clean baseload power startup Arbor Energy.

Schroeper said:

“The world needs more power, more resilient supply chains, more critical materials, and better infrastructure. In many cases, the question for the best companies is no longer whether demand exists. It’s how fast they can supply it. That’s why the physical economy is back at the center of technology.”

The new fund marks the firm’s first institutional raise focused on early-stage companies. The firm said that it “expects to complement its core investment strategy opportunistically,” with plans to “support founders from first check through scaled deployment.”

Victoria Beasley, General Partner at Gigascale Capital, said:

“I’ve spent over a decade in clean energy, through the solar buildout, the hard years, and the hype cycles. What’s different now isn’t narrative. Cost curves have moved, founders can build and deploy faster than ever, and companies being built today are winning on performance, not promise.”