In terms of sustainable infrastructure development, technology is making great leaps and bounds. Money to make it happen, though? It leaves one or two things to be desired. For one thing, these processes are still manual, and money in this sector relies on emails, spreadsheets, and documents of various kinds. Controls, and stability, are not. With its $25 million Series B funding—bringing its total funding to more than $42 million—Banyan Infrastructure aims to combine sustainable project funding with the technology to support and develop.
Old-school systems may not have made a dent in the oil and gas costs of yesteryear, but they certainly don’t cut it for new, green, sustainable technologies. These are usually small – commercial and industrial activities are between $ 1 million and $ 5 million – where the money comes from shared resources, which means that the time needed to coordinate and do it diligently is great.
For Banyan, this inadequacy in communication and supervision is a problem that he wants to solve with his investment program. With this, banks, financiers, and developers need to manage and track the complex financial activities of projects with a unified risk management system and data. It estimates that it can save up to 1,000 hours for each loan processed.
Say goodbye to tedious and time-consuming processes, digital morning loans and workflows including data entry, risk management, and contract compliance for each loan. This, Mr. Banyan hopes, will help his customers to quickly expand their fixed assets and help close about $3.5 trillion dollars a year in investment in renewables what is needed to achieve our net zero goals by 2050.
“Because sustainability doesn’t have a stable technology, risk-averse investors are reluctant to move quickly into this new industry,” said Will Greene, founder and CEO of Banyan Infrastructure in an interview with TechCrunch. “Our program focuses on reducing transaction costs and increasing transparency to create unprecedented speed and scale of project investment,”
Banyan believes that now is the time to move forward with his programs, following the introduction of the IRA in the USA. This investment of $369 billion in public funds is intended to support and develop energy technology, manufacturing, and innovation. There is not much money coming into this sector, but there is a lot of attention being paid to it, too. Being able to track, monitor, and complete the process more efficiently means that money can move forward, faster. The theory is that it will make fixed income investments more visible.
“The new commitment of $369B from the IRA is great, but we believe we can’t use it without technology to crowdfund,” Greene said. “We look forward to innovating to open IRAs and other opportunities that our customers have to do”
The $25 million round was led by Climate software investor Energize Ventures. They were joined by new investors SE Ventures and Elemental Excelerator, as well as existing investors VoLo Earth and Ulu Ventures. In addition, Banyan announced that Juan Muldoon, partner at Energize, has joined the management team.
Banyan has two primary areas for its new investment: people and marketing. When it comes to people, Banyan wants to double its size in the next year, with a greater emphasis on its products, its success, and the groups that go to market. Looking at global growth, Banyan wants to shift from sales-driven growth to sales-led growth.
“We are also expanding our products to meet regulatory requirements,” says Greene, “including providing solid products that will help our customers unlock the benefits of policies such as IRAs, as well as supporting new and emerging technologies. , such as carbon capture, hydrogen, batteries and more more.”
Greene and co-founder Amanda Li came together to found Banyan Infrastructure by recognizing the skills they each brought to their ability to successfully plan investments that could impact climate change.
“Our combined qualities are what was needed when starting Banyan Infrastructure: while Amanda brought project finance experience, and I bring experience in building SaaS companies at different scales,” says Greene. “This company is very important to us as we believe The biggest contribution you can make to climate change is investing in renewable infrastructure, and project finance is a business driver and a way to get money from donors to projects. “
For Greene, Banyan wants to move project funding from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 and accelerate the rate of investment that can be used in sustainable industries. It’s all about achieving, and going beyond, climate goals by using technology to remove financial barriers.
“In ten years, I would like to look back and know that the world has used more energy and other sustainable projects because of Banyan’s contributions, Greene concluded.