Letter From GIIN CEO and Co-Founder, Amit Bouri

I’m looking forward to seeing many impact investors next month at the GIIN Impact Forum in Amsterdam. Before we convene, I want to share some of the backdrop for this year’s forum and the conversations I’m anticipating hearing there.

Few topics are commanding more attention right now than artificial intelligence. We are seeing an immense amount of capital flowing into and concentrating in AI. At the same time, AI and emerging technologies continue to change how the world approaches and solves its most pressing problems.

So, let’s talk about it: Where should impact capital go as AI absorbs so much of the market's attention? And how can we use AI in our own work in a way that responsibly stewards solutions to the world's systemic problems?

AI is creating new questions about capital allocation. Companies will invest more than $1 trillion USD in AI in 2026, according to Goldman Sachs. As capital crowds into this sector, other sectors, including many central to serving people and the planet, are left competing for what remains. AI will also influence where impact investment is needed. In the GIIN’s 2025 State of the Market report, a quarter of impact investors cited AI as a “significant” or “moderate” macroeconomic challenge.

This is where impact investors can step up. The goal is not to outspend the largest firms on the AI frontier, but to stick to our advantages: patient, catalytic capital that flows to solutions that the market overlooks and the discipline to consider what any investment, including AI, can actually deliver for people and the planet. As Mike Kubzanky, former CEO of Omidyar Network, said on a recent episode of Impact Now, impact investors can lean into AI in two ways:

  • Backing companies in areas like weather forecasting, healthcare and education that can help build a more equitable world; and

  • Investing in the AI stack itself to make it trustworthy, verifiable and carbon neutral.

That same discipline should shape how we adopt AI ourselves. According to the GIIN’s 2024 research, only half of impact investors around the world were using AI. We now know from our upcoming State and Size of the Market report that number has risen to 92%, and we’ll be sharing more insights once the report is published at the forum. Caution is understandable, but there are also opportunities for impact investors to explore how AI can support their work. AI has the potential to alleviate some of our core operating challenges, such as due diligence, IMM and verification, while helping to expedite on-the-ground solutions, including widening access to education, financial services and healthcare.

We are not new to this. For nearly two decades, impact investors have pioneered new approaches to investing and built the standards to measure them. When we aim to solve the most substantial problems facing people and the planet, it requires bold tools to scale and measure our progress. AI may be one of them, but it demands transparency, verification against real world outcomes and accountability to the communities it affects most.

We'll dive deeper into this in Amsterdam at the Impact Forum next month, with sessions including:

  • AI Sovereignty or AI Dependency? Investing in the Future of Emerging Markets

  • How Planetary Limits and AI Drive the Next Era of Competitiveness; and

  • AI in Action: Impact Investing Use Cases

These are problems that can’t be solved in isolation, so I hope you’ll convene with us and contribute to shaping the next phase of impact investing.

Money Moves

  • New York City’s Comptroller Mark Levine plans to recommend that three city pension funds commit $5 billion USD to private-market climate investments, from renewables and grid upgrades to storage and resilient infrastructure. It supports the pensions' goal of $50 billion USD in climate solutions by 2035.

  • BlueOrchard raised $250 million USD at the first close of its blended finance Climate Action Mobilisation Fund. The fund focuses on financing climate mitigation and adaptation in emerging and frontier markets.

  • The Walton Family Foundation launched a $25 million USD impact-first Water and Nature Fund, that will de-risk early-stage nature-based climate resilience projects and help unlock capital from traditional investors.

News we're watching

  • The latest Planetary Health Check report from Planetary Guardians launched at Climate Week New York. While much of the report is a sobering reminder of the damage caused by climate change, one of the takeaways from Dr. Johan Rockstsröm taps into the bias for action that the impact investing community is known for: “We can bend the curves. We have the solutions: cut fossil fuel use and emissions, restore nature, transform food systems and put Planetary Boundaries at the heart of decisions.”

  • Impact assets in Japan rose 8% to ¥18.65 trillion (about €100 billion) in 2025, according to SIIF. A majority of that is bank debt to large companies, with pension funds making up just 2% of impact investors. However, GPIF, the world’s largest pension fund, discussing an impact mandate could be the catalyst for change. For now, community-level projects and regional SMEs present great impact opportunities.

  • “The goal is not to prove that every social or environmental problem can be solved using the same financial structure. The goal is significant impact. The sophistication lies in matching the right capital to the right opportunity.” That’s a quote from Duke University’s Catherine Clark in a recent piece she published on LinkedIn.

  • At the Bloomberg Green summit, leaders said the COP31 electrification goal is within reach, but capital is bypassing small businesses, emerging markets and grid infrastructure. For impact investors, those gaps present a clear opportunity.

  • A new BCG survey of more than 100 foundations, family offices and wealthy individuals found nearly 75% are aware of impact-first investing, but only 21% allocate significant capital to it. The main obstacles cited were too few investable deals, difficulty measuring impact and the time required to evaluate deals.

News from the GIIN

  • The GIIN released an Impact Messaging Playbook, which offers core messages and audience-specific guidance to help the impact investing industry communicate consistently and effectively.

  • In the latest segment of Impact Now, Amit Bouri sits down with Mike Kubzanky to discuss strategies for achieving both financial returns and societal impact, the role of government and private sector in scaling solutions, and the future of impact investing and AI.

  • Earlier this month, members of the GIIN team attended the IDFI 5th Anniversary Conference in Tokyo and AT ONE IMPACT WEEK in Singapore. They spoke on and attended sessions around family office mandates, IMM, climate solutions investing and the next chapter of impact investing.

  • On ImpactAlpha's Agents of Impact podcast, Amit Bouri reflects on the field's growth, from $500B to an estimated $1.5 trillion USD, over the last 17 years. He pointed to large, historically cautious institutions, such as pension funds and large institutional asset owners, as leading signs of momentum.

  • Amit Bouri contributed to a recent WSJ Pro article on a proposed U.S. Labor Department rule to 401(k) investment offerings, saying: “Many pension funds around the world and other institutional investors have seen impact investing as consistent with their fiduciary duties.”

  • Amit Bouri contributed to a FundFire article on affordable housing investing, explaining institutions worried about volatility in the public markets are looking to residential real estate to diversify their portfolios and that many pension funds are attracted to affordable housing as a social benefit for their working beneficiaries.

  • For Climate Week NYC, the GIIN hosted a gathering at our New York headquarters bringing together local GIIN members, prospective members and leaders across the climate and impact investing ecosystem.

  • The GIIN also hosted a climate solutions investing event with HSBC Asset Management. It convened a curated group of asset owners, managers and climate finance leaders for an interactive discussion, with contributions from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

  • This month, the GIIN convened investors in Frankfurt and Zurich for an interactive discussion on how to enable the growth of impact investing, insights from the GIIN’s recent work with specific investor segments and updates from other GIIN initiatives. The GIIN regularly hosts these events for current and prospective members to create a space for investors to share how they are deploying capital to tackle systemic challenges for people and planet.

Coming up

  • The GIIN will release its State and Size of the Impact Investing Market report at the GIIN Impact Forum in Amsterdam. You'll want a front row seat for its launch.

  • If you’re a GIIN member attending the forum, sign up for Members Day, our annual members only convening at the GIIN Impact Forum. This half-day event includes a panel discussion and a series of table conversations designed to help members network.