Year in Review: Impact Tech

Tech’s new thing: positive impact. Let others track the bitcoin bubble. ImpactAlpha is mining for blockchain solutions for migrants and refugees. While they obsess over Big Tech’s election #fail, we’re tracking investments in civic tech that boost engagement and participation.

The fintech story of the year wasn’t the U.S. stock market boom. It was the new approaches to credit-scoring, microinsurance, mobile money, pay-as-you-go and small-business finance that are bringing hundreds of millions into the formal economy for the first time.

As new capabilities enable new solutions, entrepreneurs and investors around the world are finding that big challenges mean big opportunities:

  1. Energy is now a tech story.
  2. New funding mechanisms bridge the cleantech venture-capital gap.
  3. Five cleantech sectors for $1 billion from Bill Gates (and other Breakthrough investors).
  4. Blockchain solutions to the 2030 global goals.
  5. Eleven venture capitalists investing in immigration tech.

Read the full list of impact tech stories of the year from ImpactAlpha