EQT Foundation teams up with the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), Temasek and Visa Foundation, as a Founding Strategic partner to launch first-of-its-kind Impact Lab. The key initiatives of the Impact Lab are highly aligned with EQT Foundation’s goal of supporting projects accelerating the shift towards an impact economy. The total grant of USD 1.5 million will be distributed during a 3-year period, aimed at research and development to create impact performance analytical tools for optimizing the positive impact of social and environmental investments and enabling investors to more efficiently allocate capital towards impact.

The Impact Lab initiative will enable important field building and development of critical infrastructure for the impact industry. The Impact Lab’s will focus on driving a deeper understanding of impact performance and the relationship between impact, risk and financial return. The initiative strives to establish the next wave of critical impact infrastructure, to increase flow of capital towards underserved communities and environments and to reduce barriers to impact investing. Without reducing barriers to effective impact investing, capital allocation will continue to be inefficient, and impact will be poorly measured. Highly impactful investments may miss out on funding, causing significant potential flow on effects to otherwise underserved communities and environments. The Impact Lab will seek to change this through R&D and ultimately push the frontiers of the impact industry.

For an initiative like this to succeed, collaboration across the impact industry is required. EQT Foundation will contribute by leveraging the broader EQT platform to provide unique input on analytics and benchmark development. The funding will also contribute to scaling the required resources and acquiring the technology and analytic capabilities to scale the impact intelligence tools that the Impact Lab will produce through its innovative R&D agenda. Cumulative funding of USD 4.5 million – provided by founding strategic partners EQT Foundation, Temasek and Visa Foundation– will allow the Impact Lab to begin its work aimed at enabling investors to more efficiently allocate capital towards effective social and environmental solutions.

The EQT Deal Team, consisting of Anna Ström, Aiste Mazeikaite and Ajeet Hansra, will support the Impact Lab team to scale their impact, leveraging the expertise, competencies, and network within EQT.