A climate-focused venture firm is widening its thesis as disaster risk grows
Convective Capital, the venture firm that launched around the concept of “firetech,” has raised a new $85 million fund and is broadening its investment mandate beyond wildfire to a wider focus on disaster resilience. The move reflects how climate-linked physical risks are becoming investable not only as environmental problems, but as infrastructure, insurance, and industrial market opportunities.
The new fund follows a $35 million vehicle raised in 2022. This time, the investor base has shifted. While Convective’s first fund was backed largely by wealthy individuals, the second is described as being supported mostly by institutions, including insurance companies and asset managers. That change is significant because it suggests that resilience-oriented investing is starting to attract backers with direct exposure to physical risk and its financial consequences.
Founder Bill Clerico argues that the scale of the market is already impossible to ignore. In comments reported alongside the fundraise, he pointed to tens of trillions of dollars of real estate exposed to disaster risk and roughly $1 trillion in annual U.S. spending on mitigation and recovery. His argument is that the problem has become large enough for private markets to build durable businesses around it.
From wildfire response to broader risk management
Convective’s original identity was closely tied to wildfire technology. Its early portfolio included Pano, which develops AI-powered cameras to spot fires early; Raine, which is building autonomous aircraft for water drops; Burnbot, which makes robots for clearing brush and grasses; and Stand, an insurance company aimed at helping homeowners strengthen their properties against fire risk.
With the new fund, the firm says it is evolving toward resilience in the physical world more broadly. The first four investments named from the new vehicle reflect that wider brief. They include The Lumber Manufactory, which is building timber mills to make forest management more economical; Drafted, which uses AI for home design; Voltaire, a company building drones to inspect power lines; and Edge Technologies, which is developing an insurance product to hedge against volatile commodity prices.
That spread is important. The thesis is no longer only about detecting or fighting fires. It is about identifying places where climate and disaster pressures create demand for new tools in inspection, land management, insurance, design, and infrastructure operations.
The insurance angle is becoming more central
One of the most revealing aspects of the fundraise is the role of insurers. Clerico told TechCrunch that a major conversation in the field has been how to convince insurers to invest directly in technologies that reduce disaster damage. He says that is beginning to happen.
That would represent a meaningful shift. Insurers are among the institutions most directly affected when disasters grow more frequent, severe, or expensive. If they begin backing technologies that lower claims exposure or improve resilience, they could become more than passive financial observers of climate risk. They could become strategic adopters and funders of mitigation tools.
The departure of insurers from some high-risk markets has already underscored the economic consequences of unmanaged exposure. Convective’s pitch is that these disruptions create markets for new products rather than just policy debates. In other words, resilience is becoming a category where infrastructure weakness, insurance retreat, and public spending all combine to support venture-scale companies.
There are early signs of traction, but the field is still young
Convective says companies from its first fund have generated $100 million in revenue and together are worth $2 billion. Clerico also said that 79% of first-fund portfolio companies have advanced from seed to Series A, a figure he described as well above industry benchmarks.
Those numbers suggest some momentum, but the resilience sector remains early. Founders still need to sell into customer groups that many startups find difficult, including utilities, insurers, and government agencies. Convective itself appears to see part of its job as helping portfolio companies navigate those relationships.
That is a real constraint on the category. Disaster resilience is not usually a direct-to-consumer market. It often depends on regulated buyers, public-sector coordination, or industries with long sales cycles and exacting standards. Strong technology alone may not be enough. Distribution, trust, and procurement fluency matter just as much.
Why the fund matters beyond venture capital
The raise is a useful indicator of how climate adaptation is being reframed. For years, climate investment was often concentrated around energy transition themes such as solar, batteries, and electric mobility. Those remain central, but resilience is emerging as a parallel lane: less about reducing emissions directly, more about managing the physical consequences of an already destabilized environment.
Convective’s new fund makes that shift visible. It treats disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, hardening, and risk transfer as an integrated economic frontier. If institutional capital continues to move in that direction, resilience technology could become one of the more important applied investment themes of the next decade.
The immediate story is a venture fundraise. The larger story is that the market for living with climate risk is rapidly becoming a market for building around it.
This article is based on reporting by TechCrunch. Read the original article.
Originally published on techcrunch.com
