The week's dealflow: October 16, 2026. ImpactAlpha · October 16, 2026 ImpactAlpha's deal news coverage for the week: Agrifood investing. East Africa Foods raised about $40 million in debt and equity to expand the storage, processing and logistics that enable smallholder farmers in Tanzania and Kenya to sell their produce to urban retailers. Catalytic capital. ROC USA secured a $10 million "catalytic equity" investment from Blue Meridian Partners to help residents acquire ownership of their manufactured housing communities. The Washington, DC-based nonprofit is fundraising to preserve 48,000 homes through community ownership over the next decade... Woodcock Foundation backed four funds with catalytic and market-rate capital. Circular economy. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners invested in Via Verde, a biomethane developer with a pipeline of 20 biogas plants in Italy. Each plant is expected to convert up to 100,000 metric tons of agricultural waste into biomethane each year... Houston-based Ara Partners acquired a majority stake in Pacific Ag, an Oregon-based company that collects leftover crop residue from farmers after harvest, then sells the material as a growing medium for mushroom farms. Climate finance. Aligned Climate Capital secured $387 million, led by Apterra Infrastructure Capital, for the construction of 20 community solar projects in Illinois and Maryland, ImpactAlpha has learned. Energy transition. 1Komma5, a German clean energy startup, raised €70 million ($78 million) to sell, install and maintain solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, EV chargers and other energy systems for homes and businesses. Investors in the round included CalSTRS, b2venture, eCapital, G2 Venture Partners Eurazeo and Marunouchi Innovation Partners... San Francisco-based virtual power plant developer Voltus raised $225 million in Series D funding from investors including Generation Investment Management, Activate Capital, Broadscale Group, Climate Investment and All Aboard Fund... The Vumela Enterprise Development Fund, a growth-stage venture debt fund backing Black-owned enterprises in South Africa, exited its investment in Everlectric, which provides electric commercial vehicles and charging infrastructure to logistics and delivery businesses. Financial inclusion. Accion and other early investors picked up secondary stakes in Kuunda's lending platform... AfricInvest invested in Vantage Payment System, a Moroccan digital payments provider, through its Financial Inclusion Vehicle, a permanent capital fund that backs African financial institutions and fintech companies serving underserved consumers and small businesses... Standard Bank Group will take a stake in OPay, a fintech company that offers payments, savings, credit and merchant services to consumers and small businesses in Nigeria, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan. Financing small businesses. EG Capital reached a first close for its EG-Economic Empowerment Fund to support African small businesses adapt their water and energy use, and supply chains, for climate resilience... The Business Development Bank of Canada and Alberta-based fintech startup Woveo partnered on a $10 million microlending program for Canadian small business entrepreneurs. The program offers loans of up to $25,000 alongside business assistance services. Fund news. Houston-based Tokio Marine HHC committed $100 million to an emerging markets debt fund underpinned by loans from the World Bank's private finance arm, the International Finance Corp. The fund, managed by BlueOrchard, has raised $300 million toward its $2 billion target. Healthy forests. Arbor Day Foundation, through its impact investment fund, invested in a pair of organizations helping US communities prevent, detect and recover from wildfires. Vibrant Planet's software supports tribal governments, utilities and public agencies with fire prevention and forest health projects. Convective Capital, through an $85 million venture fund, invests in wildfire prevention and disaster resilience companies... Dutch pension fund ABP allocated €150 million to SLM Partners to invest in sustainable forestry in Europe. SLM put the commitment into a second Silva Fund, the London-based firm's strategy for acquiring forestland and nurturing a protective canopy.

After donating $8 billion, Steve and Connie Ballmer create three regional philanthropies so people closest to the work can decide how the money is spent. Sydney Lake Updated Tue, August 11, 2026 at 8:31 AM PDT Steve and Connie Ballmer have given away more than $8 billion during the past two decades, and founded the Ballmer Group in 2015. Now they're changing who gets to decide where the next donations go. The couple's economic-mobility philanthropy, Ballmer Group, is spinning its three regional offices into separate, independent nonprofits for their regional grantmaking. The organizations, including MoveUp Southeast Michigan, MoveUp LA, and MoveUp Washington, will operate on their own but stay funded by the Ballmers. Steve was the CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014 and has an estimated net worth of $177 billion, making him the ninth-richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Some of the Ballmer Group's largest gifts include a $425 million gift to the University of Oregon to establish the Ballmer Institute for Children's Behavioral Health, a $237.5 million gift to Blue Meridian Partners for its Place Matters Initiative, and an up-to $165 million pledge to Communities In Schools to scale its student-support model to 1,000 new schools. Each of the Ballmer Group's new regional philanthropies has significance to the couple. Steve grew up in Southeast Michigan; the couple owns the Clippers in Los Angeles County; and Washington is home. So their logic behind splitting their philanthropy into three is to put decision-making about donations closer to the people doing the work. "How do we keep staying close to the work, and how do we empower our leaders?" Ballmer Group CEO Terri Ludwig told Fast Company in an interview published Monday, adding she sees the new entities as startups, not spinoffs. Each organization will build its own board and keep running its existing regional work while adjusting to fit local needs, according to a release from the Ballmer Group on July 1. Ballmer Group staff in each region will transition to the new organizations during the next year. Current grantees keep their commitments without disruption, according to the group. Ludwig will serve as a founding board member for all three while continuing to lead Ballmer Group, which will narrow its own focus to a smaller set of large, scalable national initiatives. "Our intention is to ensure that these local philanthropies can be permanent, ongoing resources in each region, while we concentrate our national efforts on advancing economic mobility in new ways," Steve and Connie Ballmer said in a joint statement. The financial structure of the new organizations is still being worked out, but an endowment is one option under consideration, GeekWire reported. About the Ballmer Group. Connie Ballmer began the couple's philanthropy about 25 years ago, long before Steve's Microsoft options turned into billions. Her early work was rooted in Washington State's foster-care system, and she used to write checks from their kitchen table, according to Fast Company. She and Steve later founded Ballmer Group in 2015, but the couple has kept a relatively lower profile than peers like other billionaire philanthropists such as MacKenzie Scott, who is frequently in the headlines for her massive giving sprees and cumulative $26 billion in giving. (To be sure, Scott doesn't publicize her gifts herself.) Her ex-husband, Jeff Bezos, and his new wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are also very prominent philanthropists, running the Bezos Earth Fund and making other major gifts that garner a lot of attention. But Connie has stepped further into view more recently. In April, she donated $80 million to NPR, which was one of the largest gifts in public media history, after the Trump administration pushed Congress to slash roughly $1.1 billion from public broadcasting. That gift was personal, not a Ballmer Group grant, as Connie is an avid NPR listener. "We need fact-based journalism, and we need local journalism," Ballmer told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published in April. Ludwig came to her role at the Ballmer Group in 2019 from Enterprise Community Partners, the national housing-development nonprofit, and worked in finance before that. Like the Ballmers are doing, Ludwig advises newly minted billionaires from the AI boom to start giving and not wait for the perfect strategy. "Start with the problem you deeply care about," Ludwig told Fast Company. "Find the people who are closest to the challenge, learn from them, and begin. Refine your approach over time." That's the main idea behind the Ballmer Group's new strategy: Move the money toward the people who already know the work. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com