Amazon Climate Pledge Fund Research
Investment Thesis
The Climate Pledge Fund is Amazon's corporate venture program. It invests in companies that can accelerate Amazon's path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. Amazon announced it in June 2020 with a $2 billion commitment; the Kellogg School profile of its head, Matt Peterson, says Jeff Bezos approved the idea within an hour and asked why it was not bigger, doubling an initial $1 billion figure. The fund is strategic first: Peterson says the team asks whether a company is building something Amazon will eventually use, or whether Amazon can help it succeed as a major customer. It still aims for a positive financial return and has no strict time horizon, which it frames as patient capital for slow-to-mature climate hardware.
Peterson describes the early focus as the big rocks of decarbonization: electric delivery vehicles, advanced nuclear, low-carbon fuels and sustainable building materials. Named examples in his interview are Rivian vans, X-energy small modular reactors, Infinium low-carbon fuels and CarbonCure concrete (used in Amazon's HQ2 buildings).
Sector Focus
The fund's site and FAQ list these areas:
- Energy generation, storage and utilization
- Transportation and logistics (aviation, trucking, marine)
- Buildings, manufacturing and materials
- Circular economy and packaging
- Food and agriculture
- Carbon removal
- Hydrogen
- Water
The contact form also offers batteries, grid technologies, data and computing, and building efficiency as categories. The fund says it is not a way for companies to sell products on Amazon's marketplaces.
Stage Focus
The FAQ says companies of all sizes and stages are considered, from pre-product startups to established enterprises that can scale to meet Amazon's demand. The fund invests globally.
Check Size
The FAQ says investments range from hundreds of thousands of dollars in seed and early-stage deals to multimillion-dollar investments. It gives no upper bound. Instruments are mainly preferred equity or convertible debt.
Lead Tendency
The fund does not state whether it leads. As a corporate venture arm it appears in rounds alongside financial investors, so lead tendency is recorded as unknown.
Recent Activity
The portfolio page reports 37 startups funded across 8 sectors and 8 countries and territories. Dated items found: first five recipients announced September 2020 (GeekWire, Business Wire), a CarbonCapture Inc. investment announced September 2023, a Kellogg profile of Matt Peterson in April 2025. The site's news feed was last updated with items from 2021 to 2024, and no new fund announcement was found. Fund status is recorded as unknown.
Portfolio Highlights
The portfolio page (filterable list, 9 of 37 companies rendered in the page's static markup) shows Ambient Photonics, Amogy, BETA Technologies, Brimstone, Carbon Capture, CarbonCure, CMC Machinery, Cyclic Materials and Electra. Other investments named in press and Wikipedia are Rivian, Redwood Materials, Turntide Technologies, ZeroAvia, X-energy and Infinium. The remaining companies on the page load client-side and could not be read, so the portfolio here is incomplete.
Team
- Matt Peterson: leads the fund; Director of corporate development and new initiatives at Amazon, Kellogg MBA 2006.
The fund's own site lists no team page. Wikipedia says it has more than ten employees. Kara Hurst, Amazon's head of sustainability at launch, co-led the fund in 2021 sources; her current role was not verified and she is not recorded.
Decision Process
Corporate venture arm inside Amazon. Inbound goes through a form on the fund's Contact page; the team reviews and replies on next steps. After funding, a portfolio success team connects the company to Amazon operations. Formal approval process is not disclosed.
Founder Preferences
Companies whose technology Amazon could deploy at scale or buy. A Female Founder Initiative exists and the portfolio page has a filter for it.
Geographic Focus
Global. Headquartered in Seattle.