Keely Anson
Our investment in Elemental Impact’s Data Center Innovation Initiative (DCII)
AI is driving a historic buildout of data centers and a growing demand for energy, materials, cooling, and water. The good news is that many of the technologies needed to reduce this carbon footprint already exist. The problem is getting them deployed fast enough.
A major barrier that is emerging has been referred to as the “scale gap.” Venture capital typically funds technology development, while infrastructure investors prefer to step in once a solution is proven. That leaves a critical gap in the middle: financing first commercial deployments that can prove a technology works at scale and unlock broader adoption.
Additionally, this industry is also tackling this challenge in silos. Hyperscalers often test the same emerging technologies independently, duplicating effort and slowing shared learning. But, if we can close the scale gap, collaborate more intentionally, and fast track technologies with the highest chance of success, we’ll create a faster path from promising technology to widespread deployment for low-carbon data center development.
Why Elemental Impact
The Autodesk Foundation is proud to support Elemental Impact’s Data Center Innovation Initiative (DCII), a deployment-focused investment initiative designed to accelerate next-generation energy and materials technologies. The DCII brings together Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft who help identify priorities, evaluate opportunities, pilot projects, and share results, alongside philanthropic partners who provide risk capital to help accelerate deployment.
Elemental Impact brings a strong track record of helping climate technologies move from innovation to scale. Since 2009, it has become a leading nonprofit investor, with every dollar invested by Elemental helping its portfolio companies unlock an additional $110 in follow-on funding—$11.8 billion in total. This combination of capital, commercialization expertise, and industry coordination makes Elemental Impact uniquely positioned to help promising energy and materials technologies reach meaningful scale.
“Philanthropy can go first, de-risk, speed up deployment, and help entrepreneurs prove their technologies at commercial scale. Through the DCII, Elemental pairs that early support with demand from some of the world’s largest customers, helping unlock new markets for climate innovation and accelerate solutions that benefit communities far beyond data centers.”
– Kim Karris, Chief Growth Officer, Elemental Impact
The impact
Elemental Impact’s DCII targets four high-impact areas of data center development: cement, metals, energy storage, and cooling infrastructure. Data centers offer an early proving ground for these solutions, which can also serve schools, hospitals, manufacturing, and the broader energy system.
Each investment is evaluated for its potential to directly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and catalyze deeper emissions reductions over time. Elemental also helps companies engage local stakeholders early, shape project benefits, and support workforce development, with the aim of improving local energy reliability, resource efficiency, and economic opportunity.
This work is especially urgent as hyperscalers race to build new data center capacity. Under pressure to move quickly, developers may default to proven but higher-carbon incumbent technologies. The DCII gets ahead of that future by identifying, testing, and de-risking lower-carbon alternatives to give hyperscalers greater confidence to deploy them at scale, more quickly.
Our collaboration
Through this initiative, the Autodesk Foundation is joining a group of companies and philanthropies working to accelerate the decarbonization of AI infrastructure, and share what we learn across the broader ecosystem of startups, hyperscalers, and industry partners.
“We’re excited to partner with Autodesk Foundation because getting climate technology into communities takes more than capital. Access to design and engineering tools and expertise can help entrepreneurs turn early pilots into commercial projects. This collaboration can help more startups take that next step.”
– Kim Karris, Chief Growth Officer, Elemental Impact
Beyond grant funding, Autodesk’s technology and expertise can help promising solutions move from pilot to deployment. Our collaboration will explore opportunities to:
- Provide Autodesk technology to selected companies whose solutions intersect with design, engineering, construction, manufacturing, infrastructure, and digital project delivery workflows.
- Connect startups with Autodesk expertise to help strengthen pilot concepts, deployment plans, and pathways to scale.
Together, we aim to help emerging technologies become deployment-ready and make the leap from successful pilots to commercial projects not only in data centers, but across the industries and infrastructure they depend on.
Learn more about Elemental Impact’s Data Center Innovation Initiative