Hunting For Gigacorns And Building The Decarbonization Economy
A gigacorn is a climate technology that has the capacity to remove at least a billion tons of carbon from the economy | Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash
Imagine being told the only way to save the planet is to find the impossible: technologies bold enough to cut a billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere.
That’s the challenge Nelson Switzer has set for himself. As Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Climate Innovation Capital (ClimateIC), he leads a venture fund dedicated to backing entrepreneurs with the potential to radically cut emissions and reshape industries.
Or as he likes to call them: “gigacorns”.
“A gigacorn is a climate technology company that has the capacity to remove at least a billion tons of carbon from the economy,” Switzer explained. “The notion should be that the gigacorn successfully removes the gigaton or more from the economy before 2050.”
In his new book, The Gigacorn Hunter: Seven Principles for a Climate Investor, he distills this approach into seven guiding principles for evaluating climate innovations: measure carbon, make a profit, ensure demand, create value, find co-benefits, embrace coopetition, and be a champion.
From Unicorns to Gigacorns
Nelson Switzer, Co-Founder and Managing Partner | Climate Innovation Capital
The name is a deliberate twist on Silicon Valley’s obsession with unicorns—startups worth $1 billion or more. But while unicorns are built on financial value, gigacorns are measured in climate value: a billion tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere.
And the metaphor works. “Almost everybody gets a good chuckle out of it,” Switzer said. “I think it’s inspiring people to want to look deeper into this sector.”
From Strategy to Investment
Switzer didn’t arrive here overnight. For much of his career, he worked with Fortune 500 companies to measure, report, and reduce their emissions. It was meaningful work, but he began to see its limits. Incremental steps inside big corporations weren’t going to solve the crisis. What was needed were bold, scalable innovations that didn’t yet exist.
That conviction led to ClimateIC’s first $100 million fund, aimed squarely at identifying and backing companies that could deliver both climate impact and commercial success. “Flexing one's mental muscle or experience and being able to share it in some sort of a cohesive fashion is pretty inspiring,” he said. “It feels accomplished…but at the same point, it feels like barely the beginning.”
A Portfolio of Possibility
Through its first $100 million fund, ClimateIC has already backed ten companies across energy, agriculture, transportation, and waste. Each one addresses a different slice of the problem, but taken together they demonstrate how innovation can unlock exponential impact.
Among the latest are:
XGS Energy, a geothermal pioneer generating clean power from the earth’s natural heat.
MyLand, an agricultural technology that uses native algae to restore depleted soils, making land more productive while sequestering carbon.
Clean Fiber, which transforms waste cardboard into high-performance insulation—cutting both carbon and methane emissions.
IdleSmart, which helps long-haul truckers cut diesel use with a smart idling system, reducing emissions while keeping drivers comfortable.
Switzer is particularly excited about MyLand’s potential. “They have converted some lands into some of the least productive or out of commission farmlands to now some of the most productive farming regions in all of the United States,” he said. Alongside carbon savings, the process improves water quality and boosts food security—what Switzer calls powerful “co-benefits.”
From Gigacorns to Megacorns and Millicorns
As his work evolved, Switzer realized the gigacorn framework needed nuance. Not every solution comes in billion-ton increments.
“The economy is not built in gigaton slices,” he explained. “There might not be gigacorns, but there are megacorns, a million-ton reducer, or millicorns, a 100,000-ton reducer, that could zero out the emissions within those subsections.”
He points to the six sectors defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—energy, buildings, transportation, food and agriculture, waste, and industry—as each containing sub-sectors where smaller-scale innovations can still deliver massive impact.
“Absolutely, we want the big moves,” Switzer said. “But if it’s a small capital deployment, and you’re going to zero out an entire subsector, it’s incredibly powerful as well.”
The Seven Principles for Climate Investor
Switzer uses MyLand to illustrate the point about the different guiding principles of evaluating a Gigacorn. By injecting concentrated algae into soil through local irrigation systems, the company revives barren land into fertile ground. “That’s another incredible co-benefit,” Switzer noted. Beyond carbon, the process improves water retention, reduces nutrient runoff, and boosts yields—showing how a single innovation can deliver multiple wins at once.
But he cautions that not every innovation is net-positive. “There have been a number of companies that we’ve looked at where there's spectacular decarbonization that's delivered,” he said. “But unfortunately…a result of their process may drive some sort of other negative outcome. So it's not a co-benefit, it's a co-risk.”
The Gigacorn Hunter: Seven Principles for a Climate Investor
Technology: Promise and Peril
Like many investors, Switzer sees enormous potential in the convergence of AI, biotechnology, and clean energy. But he’s quick to point out the risks alongside the rewards.
“AI has the potential to both drive incredible gains, but there are a number of unanswered questions,” he said, citing the staggering energy demands of data centers. Clean energy is essential—not just for power generation, but for transforming industries like cement and steel, which together account for about 13% of global emissions.
Biotechnology, particularly agritech, is another frontier close to his heart. “Most people do not know, see, or understand what it takes to produce all the food that we as eight billion people on the planet consume,” he said. “One of the biggest areas where we can have the greatest impact is how we change the agricultural systems and the technologies we can introduce there.”
The Clock Is Ticking
So where does this all lead? For Switzer, it comes down to urgency, opportunity, and agency.
“We have a climate clock, it is counting down, and we have to beat it,” he said. “Or the disruption that we will see in our economy and our society will be astronomical.”
At the same time, he sees the coming decade as the biggest economic shift in history. “Investing in the decarbonization of the economy is the single greatest economic transformation and opportunity that we have ever witnessed,” he said. “I like to call it the decarbonization of everything.”
And perhaps most importantly, he wants people to know this isn’t someone else’s job. “Whether it's with a hundred dollars or a hundred million dollars…this is a solvable problem, because it is.”
Why It Matters
Gigacorns may sound mythical. But in Switzer’s hands, the idea is less about fantasy and more about focus—a way of reminding us that we don’t have to settle for half-measures.
Because if the next chapter of the global economy is going to be written, it won’t be by the companies that cling to old ways of doing business. It will be written by the innovators bold enough to erase their footprints—and in doing so, give the rest of us a fighting chance.
At Conspiracy of Love, we help changemakers tell their most powerful stories — stories that inspire action, build movements, and create lasting impact.
Find out more about our Values-Driven Storytelling and GPS to Purpose workshops, and how we can help you scale your impact.
