Category: Autodesk Foundation

Our investment in the Small Enterprise Assistance Fund (SEAF) Across Europe, the shortage of skilled labor presents a significant challenge for engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) companies. From small subcontractors to mid-sized firms with hundreds of employees, the struggle to recruit qualified workers affects project timelines and costs. Poland stands out as a bright spot,…

Our investment in Social Finance Hawaii’s future relies heavily on a robust pipeline of talented engineers. Currently, the University of Hawaii College of Engineering graduates approximately 73% of the engineers needed to meet the state’s workforce demands, leaving a significant 27% gap. Each year, around 350 engineering positions remain unfilled, underscoring an urgent need for…

Our investment in Trellis Climate innovation is not failing for lack of technical ideas. Across energy, industry, agriculture, mobility, and carbon removal, breakthrough technologies are emerging with the potential to reduce emissions at gigaton scale. What is failing is the bridge to deployment. Many climate tech startups reach a critical inflection point: the technology works,…

Our investment in Upaya Social Ventures India faces a dual crisis: in 2022, more than 75 million people lived in extreme poverty, defined as less than $3 a day, while escalating climate risks threatened the country’s sustainable development path according to the World Bank. Addressing these challenges requires solutions that create pathways to formal, dignified…

This blog was co-created in partnership with Team4Tech. India is home to nearly 126 million smallholder farmers, many of whom are increasingly exposed to climate change and environmental stress. Rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and pest and disease pressure threaten both crop yields and farmer incomes for farmers across all of India. Kheyti, a nonprofit based…

Our investment in Trellis, an Acumen Investment Initiative Smallholder farmers (SHFs) produce up to 70% of the food in low- and middle-income countries. Yet they are among the most climate vulnerable people on the planet. Increasingly severe and unpredictable droughts, floods, and heatwaves are threatening their livelihoods and, by extension, the food security of more…

Image courtesy of RMI Of all the climate risks facing the world today, extreme heat may have the greatest potential to threaten human health. It is already having real, life-threatening consequences, especially for the more than one billion people living in informal settlements around the world. In many tropical cities, temperatures are pushed even higher…

Image courtesy of Mati Carbon Global efforts to combat climate change increasingly point to a critical gap: the need for large-scale, permanent carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to address the residual emissions that will remain even when net zero is reached. Scientists estimate that around 9 billion tons of CO₂ must be removed annually to meet…