100x100 Launches $100 Million Fund II to Build 50 Climate Companies Across Southeast Asia and India

100x100, a Singapore-based climate company builder and venture capital fund launched by the team that co-founded Wavemaker Impact, has announced Fund II targeting $100 million to create and scale 50 more high-impact climate companies across Southeast Asia and India, with each company designed to have the potential to abate 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and achieve $100 million in revenue. The Fund II launch follows the success of the firm's initial $60 million fund raised in 2023, which attracted backing from the US Development Finance Corporation, Singapore Economic Development Board, British International Investment, Triple Jump and other institutional and strategic investors, and has since co-founded 27 companies across eight countries with a portfolio survival rate nearly double the median venture capital average. Marie Cheong, Founding Partner of 100x100, said the firm's name reflects its conviction that profit and carbon reduction are not a trade-off but a multiplier, and that Fund II doubles down on a demonstrated strategy with a platform that is ready to go.

 

The Venture-Building Model and Its Commercial Rationale

 

Rather than funding existing startups, 100x100 works alongside experienced entrepreneurs to build companies from the ground up in high-emissions sectors including energy, food, materials and supply chains, using a structured venture-building process to identify white spaces where low-emissions technologies are ready for large-scale commercial deployment but no well-capitalised company yet exists to execute that opportunity. The firm speaks to over 1,000 experienced founders per year to identify entrepreneurs with the expertise and track record required to build and scale businesses from day one, systematically sourcing the human capital that determines whether a venture-building approach can consistently produce companies capable of rapid growth. Every venture is intentionally built to capture a green discount, delivering cost or economic advantages while driving down emissions, targeting the commercially self-sustaining business models that do not depend on policy incentives or carbon credit revenues to justify their unit economics.

The operational model involves 100x100 holding significantly higher equity stakes than traditional venture capital investors while portfolio companies operate at 1.5 times greater capital efficiency than industry norms, creating a financial structure that aligns the firm's returns tightly with company performance and provides more runway per dollar invested. This higher ownership combined with capital efficiency translates into Fund I being on track for top-quartile venture capital performance despite operating in markets and sectors that many global VC funds consider too complex or too early-stage for institutional capital deployment. The portfolio survival rate nearly double the median VC average provides a credible operational validation of the venture-building model's ability to de-risk company creation in emerging market climate technology contexts.

 

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Portfolio Performance and Commercial Validation

 

Fund I portfolio company Rize, which reduces methane emissions in rice cultivation and serves smallholder rice farmers, generated $11 million in revenue in 2025 with 550 percent year-on-year growth while improving the livelihoods of over 40,000 farmers, demonstrating that the 100x100 model can produce companies that scale commercially at pace while delivering measurable climate and social impact simultaneously. Helios, a residential solar company in the Philippines, has grown consistently at over 40 percent month-on-month for the past 12 months, illustrating that the venture-building approach can identify and execute on renewable energy distribution opportunities in emerging Asian markets that traditional solar deployment models have not efficiently served. Across the Fund I portfolio, the majority of companies have generated revenue within six months of launch and collectively raised over $28 million from 16 external investors, providing evidence of commercial traction that attracts follow-on capital beyond the 100x100 anchor investment.

The portfolio's geographic and sectoral breadth across eight countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia reflects the firm's thesis that the region sits at the intersection of the world's most urgent climate challenges, holding a disproportionate share of global emissions while becoming a key centre for manufacturing reshoring, AI infrastructure buildout and food system redesign. Quentin Vaquette, Founding Partner of 100x100, said the firm is building the very companies the world needs right now that will become the most compelling investment opportunities of this decade, targeting a collective contribution of reducing 10 percent of global emissions across its portfolio. This collective emissions reduction ambition provides a portfolio-level climate accountability framework that translates individual company-level carbon abatement potential into a macro-scale impact thesis.

 

The Southeast and South Asia Investment Context

 

The 100x100 Fund II thesis is grounded in the specific characteristics of Southeast Asia and India as a region that combines rapid economic growth, high emissions intensity and large addressable markets for climate solutions with relatively underdeveloped venture capital ecosystems for early-stage climate technology company creation. The manufacturing reshoring trend driven by geopolitical fragmentation is creating new industrial capacity across Vietnam, Indonesia, India and other markets that can be built with lower-carbon technologies from the outset rather than requiring expensive retrofitting of carbon-intensive assets built to older standards. Similarly, the AI infrastructure buildout creating substantial new energy demand across the region presents an opportunity to serve that demand with clean energy solutions designed specifically for Asian market conditions rather than adapted from developed country contexts.

The team of six partners with collective experience spanning 58 companies built, 73 climate businesses invested in and 19 exits provides the operational depth needed to execute a high-volume venture-building programme across diverse market environments. This track record across the full cycle from company creation through scaling to exit provides Fund II investors with evidence-based confidence in the partnership's ability to navigate the complexity of venture building in emerging Asian markets, where regulatory, cultural, operational and financing challenges differ substantially from the Silicon Valley or European venture ecosystems that most climate technology venture capital draws its operating model from.

 

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Outlook for Climate Venture Building in Emerging Asia

 

The 100x100 Fund II launch reflects growing institutional recognition that venture-building approaches that create companies from the ground up in climate-critical sectors can systematically produce investable opportunities in geographies and sectors that traditional startup-funding VC cannot efficiently source. Whether the model can successfully scale from 27 companies across Fund I to 50 companies across Fund II while maintaining the near-double-median survival rate and capital efficiency advantages that characterise the existing portfolio will be the primary operational test of the Fund II deployment strategy. Sustained delivery of commercially viable, high-growth climate companies with demonstrated emissions abatement potential would establish 100x100 as the reference firm for climate venture building in Southeast Asia and India and demonstrate that the intersection of commercial returns and climate impact is achievable at scale in emerging market contexts.

 

Source: 100x100