Marie Cheong, Founding Partner of Wavemaker Impact
100×100 (previously Wavemaker Impact), the Singapore-based climate company builder behind a clutch of Asia-focused startups, has launched a US$100 million second fund to assemble and scale 50 new firms across Southeast Asia and India.
The move cements a growing trend: investors and builders are shifting from pure software bets to hands-on venture creation to turn climate technologies into commercially viable businesses in the region.
A builder, not just a backer
100×100’s model is deliberate and prescriptive. Rather than seeding existing early-stage startups, the firm partners with seasoned entrepreneurs to co-found companies from scratch. Each venture is designed with an explicit commercial target, US$100 million in revenue, and an emissions abatement ambition of 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over its lifetime. The firm says it will focus on energy, food, materials, and supply-chain sectors where demand, geopolitical shifts, and resource constraints are reshaping markets.
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Founding partner Marie Cheong framed the thesis succinctly: “Our name reflects our conviction that profit and carbon reduction are not a trade-off, but a multiplier. With Fund II, we are doubling down on a demonstrated strategy with a platform that is ready-to-go.” The quote underlines 100×100’s pitch: build ventures that exploit a ‘green discount’, delivering cost or economic advantages while cutting emissions.
Why Southeast Asia and India matter
The Southeast Asian and South Asian markets are central to 100×100’s strategy for several reasons. The region accounts for a considerable share of global emissions from agriculture, industry, and power generation, while simultaneously undergoing rapid industrialisation, manufacturing reshoring, and infrastructure expansion. These dynamics create fertile ground for technologies that lower costs and emissions, especially those that can be embedded into supply chains or scaled across large, fragmented markets.
Quentin Vaquette, another founding partner, bluntly argued the regional case: “Southeast and South Asia sit at the intersection of the world’s most urgent challenges, holding a disproportionate share of global emissions while increasingly becoming a key region for manufacturing reshoring, AI infrastructure buildout, and food system redesign.”
100×100’s stated target is ambitious: collectively, the ventures it builds should reduce 10 per cent of global emissions, a claim that signals the scale it intends to pursue.
Track record and traction
Fund II follows Fund I, which closed at a US$60 million hard cap in 2023. The firm says its initial cohort has produced fast-moving results: 27 co-founded companies across eight countries, a portfolio survival rate nearly double the median venture capital average, and portfolio companies operating at roughly 1.5 times greater capital efficiency than typical VC-backed startups. External validation includes demand from institutional and strategic backers such as the US Development Finance Corporation, Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and British International Investment, among others.
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The portfolio has produced concrete commercial cases. Rize, a company that reduces methane emissions in rice cultivation and serves smallholder farmers, reportedly delivered US$11 million in revenue in 2025 with 550 per cent year-on-year growth, while improving livelihoods for over 40,000 farmers. Helios, a residential solar provider in the Philippines, is cited as growing at more than 40 per cent month-on-month over the past year. Such metrics are central to 100×100’s argument that its venture-building model accelerates commercial product-market fit faster than traditional funding routes.
How the venture builder works
100×100 employs a structured process to locate white spaces in high-emissions sectors. The firm says it speaks to over 1,000 experienced founders each year to identify operators with domain expertise who can lead scalable companies from day one. It takes larger equity stakes than traditional VCs and embeds operational support and playbooks into the early stages, effectively trading a higher level of involvement for quicker, more efficient scaling.
The ‘green discount’ concept is worth unpacking: rather than positioning climate products as premium add-ons, 100×100 seeks ideas that reduce unit costs or improve productivity while simultaneously lowering emissions, making them more likely to be adopted at scale in price-sensitive markets across Southeast Asia and India.
Regional implications and challenges
100×100’s expansion is timely, but not without obstacles. Commercialising hardware-intensive or industrial-process innovations in Southeast Asia involves high capital intensity, complex supply chains, and regulatory fragmentation. Local partners, distribution networks and long sales cycles, especially for industrial and agricultural customers, remain hurdles. The firm’s playbook of co-founding companies with experienced founders and taking larger equity stakes is explicitly designed to mitigate some of these operational risks.
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For Southeast Asia, the model offers potential benefits beyond emissions reductions. If the builder can scale firms that reduce costs for manufacturers or farmers, the region could capture more value in emerging supply chains, particularly as multinational companies reorient production away from concentrated centres. That could translate into job creation, technology transfer, and greater regional resilience.
What investors are buying
Institutional backers of Fund II are effectively betting on a repeatable engine for climate company creation in markets that are often seen as difficult for pure-play climate tech investors. The claim of near-top-quartile performance, higher capital efficiency, and rapid revenue growth will be closely watched by LPs seeking both impact and returns. Whether the model can consistently produce US$100-million revenue companies and deliver massive abatement across 50 new ventures remains to be proven at scale.
Closing thoughts
100×100’s US$100 million Fund II is a bold bet that the most impactful climate solutions in Southeast Asia and India will emerge from active venture building rather than passive capital allocation. Its early results offer reasons for cautious optimism: fast revenue growth, strong founder engagement, and a focused sector strategy. The coming years will test whether the studio’s playbook can convert ambitious climate and commercial targets into a pipeline of durable, regionally rooted companies that reshape how emissions-intensive industries operate across Asia.
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